By Patricia Mukhim
When we were young kids in school and got into mischief during class hours the teacher would thunder, “Don’t play the fool or I will make you stay back after school.” That was the worst threat. No one wanted to be punished and to write 100 times: “I will not talk in class.” Now we have come a full circle to circa 2026 and it is not the kids but the system which we call the “Government,” that is supposed to run everything to the advantage of the people who voted the 60 “public representatives” in successive elections. We never asked whether those we elected actually “represent” us or their own political and financial interests. Firstly we don’t use our goddamned brains during elections. We throw away our thinking caps to the first dustbin and start repeating the rhetoric spouted by political party A, B, C. These political parties know our weaknesses so well and know we can be bribed not by money but by something as cheap as a lilting melody (Remember the song, “Ha U Prah?”Weren’t we all singing along each time that vehicle carrying volunteers passed our homes? So that’s who we are. Suckers for a song ; a rhetoric; a punchline but never the real thing.
For 50 years we never questioned why the government continued to pay teachers who were not teaching anyone because no students attended their schools? Meghalaya has 206 such schools. One can guess that politicians started them all, yielding to pressure from constituents who wanted teaching jobs for their children or for themselves. With no inspection such schools continued to function with no one any the wiser as to how no Education Minister since 1972 had the moral spine to shut down the schools. Obviously there might have been children who attended the school initially but seeing that teachers were not interested in teaching and attended school only when they felt like, the parents must have admitted the kids to the local missionary school. But even here, there’s competition. If the Catholics opened a school the Presbyterian church too would set up one just a little distance away. Then both would compete for students and both would become non-viable. But that’s how it has always been in Meghalaya.
So this state that lives largely in the clouds has an astounding total of 14, 582 schools for a population of 29,66,889 people of which only about 30% of the population are in the age group of 6-17 years or the school going age. So 30% of 30 lakh people equals 9 lakh school going children. If we divide 9 lakh by 14,582 schools we get just 62 students per school. Obviously schools like RK Mission and the Catholic and Presbyterian and perhaps a few Government schools must be having over a thousand students. So the rest of the schools that subsist on government funds and whose teachers are paid by the government are the ones that have been functioning in the breach and need to be disbanded.
If Tripura with a population of 36.74 lakh population has only 4929 schools what is Meghalaya with a smaller population of 29.66 lakh people doing with 14,582 schools which is over three times the number in Tripura? Tripura has 36,433 teachers of which only 4262 are paid by Government and only 43 schools are government aided. Compare that to Meghalaya where 7,783 schools are government-run, 4,172 are government-aided, and the teacher strength is 55,160. Yet Tripura is performing far better than Meghalaya in the Performance Grading Index (PGI). The PGI developed by the Union Education Ministry assesses the quality of school education across all states. The PGI assesses (1) Learning Outcomes (2) Access (3) Infrastructure and Facilities (4) Equity (5) Governance processes (6) Teacher Education & Training. Having watched the kids attending schools in rural areas from close quarters where one classroom serves three or more classes (don’t ask how teaching is even possible in such situations) and teachers treat their jobs like a part time occupation one is not at all shocked by the PGI rankings. It had to happen. But it is a bit late in the day.
So now that the State Government is well informed about the non-performing schools numbering nearly 2500 (206 with zero enrolment and 2269 with single digit enrolment) where teachers are actually teaching ghosts, what is its immediate plan of action? Well, the Government which dares to close down nearly 2,500 non-functioning schools must be ready to face a backlash. But why should a Government that has the courage of conviction to confront years of deception and manipulation have to pay the price? Should the people of Meghalaya not stand up now and urge the Government to shut down non-performing schools that have only teachers drawing salaries and no students? Is that unfair? Should those who have not taught for decades still be paid salaries? Where is the justice here?
And yet in this land of clouded minds, no Government has had the moral courage to address the issue head on. Now there is a reason why students don’t attend government schools. The buildings are dilapidated; the roofs are leaking; the benches and tables are all half broken. That is exactly the situation of the Raibah Government Lower Primary School when Batskhem Thabah was posted there as a teacher post the Covid years. Batskhem was a tour guide before he became a teacher and he was aware of Raibah. Many of us of course heard of this village for the first time when we were invited for the launch of a living library in 2025. When Batskhem arrived at Raibah he found not a single student. So what did he do? He shared his anguish with a few dear friends who helped raise funds to repair the leaking school roof and the broken window panes. Then Batskhem urged the Rangbah Shnong and the parents to send their children to the school, promising that he would give them the education they yearned. In this effort Batskhem was also assisted by the Social Work Department, St Edmunds College and Sociology Department of Williamson Sangma University. Green Hub an NGO based at Tezpur also helped fund the living library where students could actually learn about the environment and the medicinal herbs that grew around the village.
In fact, visitors to the Raibah School were taken on a round of the village by the students who smartly demonstrated their knowledge about the different leaves, plants and roots and their medicinal and nutritional value. That indeed is true education and one is grateful to Batskhem for giving his all to Raibah school which is now functioning well, even after he was transferred out to another Government Upper Primary School in Mawlaiteng, Sohiong Block. It takes a good teacher to turn a school around. The question is whether the system allows the best teachers to enter the teaching “profession,” not a salaried job. Some heads of educational institutions have frankly stated that the biggest impediment to a good educational system are the School Managing Committees headed by the local Rangbah Shnongs who pull strings to get teaching jobs for those they favour and the teachers’ lobbies who only promote their self-interests. Sadly there’s no one to lobby for the students. However, not all Rangbah Shnong are manipulative. There are those who are deeply concerned about the state of education in their area and who collaborate with teachers to upgrade the schools in their areas.
As of now even if 2,500 schools or more are closed down out of the 14,582 schools, Meghalaya still has more schools than it can efficiently run and its resources are still pilfered. It’s time now for the MDA Government to take stock and make decisions that will benefit students in the long term. The MDA Government cannot turn around education if it avoids hard decisions. Granted that this is a problem which the MDA Government inherited from past governments but now that all irregularities are exposed, Chief Minister Conrad Sangma must lead from the front and make hard decisions.
It’s rather sardonic that the Khasi Students’ Union (KSU) which should focus on student welfare, has never made this debilitating educational issue its agenda. We have never heard them discussing the poor PGI ranking and the sad state of affairs of most government run schools. Now that the KSU knows about the ghost schools with no students and only teachers who are regularly paid, will they take up this issue in right earnest?
If not, other activists must rally around this issue. Better still the next election issue in 2028 should harp on the poor state of education in Meghalaya and how it can be remedied. We the people should stop listening to politicians who preach clean governance but lack the courage to tell the Government to shut down the non-functional schools.
The MDA Government has provided school buses for urban school children. It’s time to provide school buses to rural kids who have to walk several kilometres to the nearest school. Meanwhile what is irksome is that the MDA Government believes it can solve every problem by coming up with stylish acronyms. Recently the CM launched the “CM LEAD Fellowship” under which 12 fellows will be deployed across districts to strengthen planning, coordination and monitoring of education reforms. May we know who these 12 Fellows are and their expertise? What are the educational reforms that Government has churned out? What are the outcomes expected and what are the timelines? We need to know because we the public are as interested in the state of education as the Government is.
