SHILLONG: An orientation workshop for education officers in the northeastern states was held at the ICSSR guest house on Friday.
The workshop, which was organised by Depart-ment of Educational Policy of National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), focused on the role of traditional institutions in implementing educational programmes.
“The involvement of local authority in the management of elementary education is critical aspect with regard to implementation of RTE Act in the North East,” Avinash K. Singh, professor and head of the department, told The Shillong Times. Singh said the main purpose of the workshop was to orient education officers and people belonging to the autonomous councils or those designated as local authority under the RTE Act.
“RTE Act is at a different stage of implementation in different parts of the country and 10 percent of the schools all over India are RTE complaint. The remaining 90 percent are not compliant as resources are required to make RTE successful,” he added.
Singh felt that traditional institutes should be given more importance and due recognition for proper implementation of education programmes.
“Northeastern states are ahead of literacy averages but school education even in Mizoram, which has the second highest literacy rate, is a problem as there are dropout rates, especially in areas governed by ADCs. These areas lag behind other areas and the reason may be that lack of adequate involvement of these bodies in the school management,” he said.
Seven northeastern states participated in the workshop on the ‘Functioning of Local Authority and Autonomous Councils Sixth Schedule of the Constitution in Management of Elementary Education in North Eastern States’.
“We have been holding workshops for the last four years and this time we chose Meghalaya. We visited four schools — two government-aided and two government schools,” said Singh.
When asked about dropout rates in the elementary level, Singh said, “Dropout is a major problem. In a certain school, it is found that there is no problem with enrolment but there are dropouts, especially after the completion of elementary education, children would leave. These things need to be taken care of.”
He called for emphasis on learning achievement of students in government schools and better infrastructure for training teachers in the North East.
