By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, Sep 10: Despite policy tweaks and investments in the education sector for more than a decade, the performance of Meghalaya’s schools has been falling.
Many schools have been recording low pass percentages over the years while the success rate of some has been zero.
The state’s underwhelming Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) results have raised a crucial question: Are Meghalaya’s students struggling or is the system setting them up to fail?
This year’s SSLC results paint as grim a picture as the past 10 years with the pass percentage struggling to go beyond 55. Of the schools that had candidates for the exam, 124 schools reported a 0% pass rate in 2024, an improvement over the 146 with the same score in 2023.
To make things worse, 36 of these schools have recorded a 0% pass rate for three years in a row. For a state that has invested heavily in education through programmes such as the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, the results suggest a deep and systemic failure.
While schools in Meghalaya are languishing, the Kendriya Vidyalayas (KVs) in the state are proving that students can excel when given the right support. With a nearly 100% pass rate, the KVs highlight the stark contrast in educational outcomes between well-funded and well-equipped schools and those lacking even the basics.
This leads to the uncomfortable realisation that the issue is not with the students’ ability but with the environment they are placed in, educationists say.
The state’s SSLC pass percentage has fluctuated without showing any sustained improvement. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic saw the pass percentage drop to 50.31%. It improved to 56.96% in 2022 but dipped again to 51.93% in 2023. This year, the pass rate stood at 55.80% but was far behind other Northeastern states such as Manipur (93.03%), Tripura (87.54%), and Assam (75.70%).
The subject-wise breakdown of results further reveals the extent of the problem. While almost every student (99.1%) passed Khasi and a healthy 85.2% cleared Garo, only 41% managed to pass in Mathematics. The consistent failure in core subjects such as Mathematics is a major contributor to the state’s overall poor performance.
The National Achievement Survey 2021 confirms what SSLC results already suggest – Meghalaya’s education system is in dire straits. The state’s students consistently score below the national average across all key subjects. Only 53% of students in Meghalaya can read and comprehend simple texts compared to the national average of 64%. Similarly, just 33% of Class 3 students can solve basic addition and subtraction problems, far below the national average of 45%. By Class 8, the situation is no better. Only 32% of the students can solve problems involving fractions and decimals compared to the national average of 48%. This consistent underperformance suggests that students are falling behind in foundational learning and are not receiving the necessary support to catch up.
Meghalaya’s education system is clearly at a crossroads. Decades of policy changes and financial investments have not yielded the desired results with pass percentages remaining dismally low. Reducing the number of subjects required to pass the SSLC exam from six to five in 2011 was intended to ease the burden on students, but it has not led to any significant improvement.
The disparity between well-performing schools such as the KVs and the rest highlights the urgent need for structural reforms. Better infrastructure, improved teacher training, and stronger accountability for underperforming schools are critical. Without these changes, the state risks leaving another generation of students trapped in a failing system, educationists point out.
“The time for incremental changes has passed. Meghalaya’s education system requires sweeping reforms, from rural school management to teacher support and curriculum design. The longer this crisis persists, the more students will be set up for failure and that’s a report card, Meghalaya can ill afford,” a sector expert said.