THE status of education in Meghalaya has been abysmal and this is borne out by statistics. The latest all-India ranking puts Meghalaya at the 10th grade which is the lowest in the country. This however is not news. State Chief Minister, Conrad Sangma has belabored this fact times without number. Meghalaya has a total of 14,582 schools and pays 55,160 teachers. Of these schools, 2269 schools have single digit enrolment meaning that there are too many schools in a small village competing for student enrolment. There are 206 schools with no students at all but the teachers are being paid. The drop-out rate at 22,000 students annually at different levels is also very high. School dropout rates in the state vary drastically between regions, with a staggering 90% student attrition rate across six specific districts transitioning into higher secondary levels. According to UDISE+ statistics, while the state average for secondary school dropouts sits at an alarming 21.7% (nearly double the national average of 12.6%), rural and ethnically distinct pockets face far deeper problems.
The education sector in Meghalaya struggles with a highly fragmented school system. Thousands of schools were created not because they were needed but because of political compulsions. In the same village there would be a church run school, a private school and a government school. Naturally there were not enough takers for all three categories of schools. Schools were set up without mapping the needs of the village and without looking at the viability factor. They were treated like one-time investments where the teachers were paid by government but the maintenance and upkeep of the school was no one’s responsibility. This is the real reason for the existence of schools without students or only 5-6 students with an equal number of teachers. The right thing to do now is to streamline the entire system and close down schools that have no students or too few students and ensure the students from such schools are enrolled in the next nearest school. It’s time for the Government to invest in school transportation systems since most schools, especially high and higher secondary schools are located at a distance away, sometimes requiring that students cross rivers and streams on their way.
The empty and near-empty institutions continue to draw public funds and keep teachers on payrolls without serving any learners. And while some schools suffer from teacher shortage other schools have teachers but no students. This over-saturation of schools spreads the state’s Rs 1,967 crore annual teacher salary budget thin, preventing meaningful investment in modern learning materials, electricity, or clean drinking water for functioning schools.To counter this crisis, the state government is moving forward with a school rationalisation policy. This strategy involves closing or merging nearly 2,500 under-enrolled facilities to scale down the total number of schools to roughly 12,000, allowing the Education Department to reassign teachers where they are actually needed. Also the state intends to review and consolidate school grants and implement the Meghalaya State Education Commission (MSEC) report to structurally reform the system. This requires political will and the present MDA Government has to take a call, no matter what the political costs.
