By Maitphang Syiem
As you begin to read, imagine a Class 6 student named Bahduh. Every morning, he walks past a newly tarred road to reach school. Bahduh sits at his desk present and accounted for in the register. But although Bahduh is in Class 6 he cannot reliably read a paragraph from his class textbook; he cannot perform simple numerical tasks without emphatic support. Perhaps he will likely drop-out before reaching Class 10. When he does, Bahduh’s unrealised potential will be an impeding economic loss that no infrastructure project can recover.
This story is not imaginary; it is what education reports and datasets are telling us. It is a story that demands to be read as a conversation about what kind of future we are actually building. Yes, dear readers we are talking of the PGI 2.0. Simply put it reveals uncomfortable metrics. The (PGI 2.0) for 2024–25, released by India’s Ministry of Education in May 2026, evaluates school education across six domains. The domain that cuts to the core is Learning Outcomes and Quality which measures what children in Class 3, Class 6 and Class 9 can actually do: read, calculate, reason, apply. It carries 240 of the total 1,000 points. Our score stands at 47.2 out of 240; this is below 20% of the maximum possible in the most important domain of the entire index.
Every other North Eastern State has improved but why are we in Meghalaya ranking so low and alone in Akanshi-2 (Grade in the PGI 2.0) for Learning Outcomes? Now drawing further from the UNDP Human Development Framework, the HDI measures the years of schooling that adults in our state have completed and that today’s children are likely to complete. The HDI stands at 0.690 in the medium human development band with an index of 0.601 which resonates to population receiving moderate formal education. Looking deeper the HDI counts the years a child sits in school whereas the PGI learning outcomes measure what happens to their minds while they are in school. If one looks into the indices, the HDI says that children are attending school, and the PGI says the attending is not translating into learning; therefore, the return on investment is not happening.
Having seen the low side of the situation, there are also strengths that we must acknowledge honestly. In terms of Equity our state score in PGI is 208.7 out of 260 (Uttam-2 grade) a nationally high performing category. This implies that the state does not discriminate sharply between its students. Everyone gets roughly the same experience. The problem is that the experience itself is inadequate. Now coming to the Access score, we stand at 42.8 out of 80 (Prachesta-1, grade) implying that children are in school, enrolment is up. Over three consecutive PGI cycles, the state improved from 401.6 to 417.9 to 448. These are real gains indeed; however, the pace is the problem.
The pertinent question now is whether the risk is already inside the classroom? In the context of disaster science, we speak of risk as a function of three things: hazards, the exposure of people, the vulnerability and the capacity. Applying this language, here the hazard is the school system that occupies children’s time without building their minds. When a child attends school for nine years and leaves without functional literacy, that is a slow-onset hazard to human development invisible until a generation has been lost. A Low Outcome score of 47.2/240 is not a forecast; it is the hazard in real time. Furthermore, the exposure is for every child enrolled in a government school in Meghalaya. Because Access is reasonably strong, (as per the PGI 2.0 score) and large numbers of children are inside a low-learning system. High attendance in a low-learning outcome environment means high exposure but nothing gained. The more children the system draws in while failing to teach them, the wider the damage.
Now the Vulnerability factor denotes many entities and runs deeper than the classroom walls. Firstly the lesser educated parents-student interrelationship brings less learning support at home; secondly the malnourishment which undeniably results in a cognitive challenge that no curriculum alone can overcome; and thirdly undertrained teachers, reflected in the state’s weak Teacher Education and Training score of 46.7/100. These compound vulnerabilities are what transform a school-quality problem into a generational human development crisis. To counter this we need to leverage capacity collectively through an adaptive bottom-top approach with inclusive, impactful deployment and this matters most at the moment.
If one would introspect and confront the problem there would be no deliverables that can deliver the greatest return on investment comparable to a child who can read, calculate and think rationally and analytically. If children master foundational literacy by Class 3 they would be statistically more likely to complete secondary school. A child who completes secondary school earns significantly more over a lifetime. Higher earnings raise the income component of HDI. Better-educated mothers raise healthier children directly improving the health component of HDI. Education and health are not line items in a welfare budget. They are the engine of every other development goal the state has ever announced.
Development is needed but what matters most is to develop minds that can build better all-weather roads, minds that can generate sustainable employment, minds that can establish transparent, incorruptible governance, minds which can deliver equal and fair justice, minds which can preserve nature. The most important question at this juncture is how we can build and fill those minds. The clear-cut answers are many. Capacity development not just capacity building, investment in foundational literacy, which is a necessary intervention and non-negotiable brick. It may sound amusing if we say, “Feed the child before asking the child to learn,” but the link between malnutrition and learning outcomes is not theoretical it is neurological and one can say investment that adequately funds school nutrition is investing in its GDP of the next decade.
With all due respect to the teachers, this is a profound thought. Anyone can become a teacher but few can teach. A TE&T score of 46.7 out of 100 means classrooms are staffed by educators who want to teach but have not really capitalized on professional tools. It is the single most direct lever on Learning Outcome scores available. Every Learning Outcome point gained today comes with a time lag of ten to fifteen years – a measurable improvement in Meghalaya’s HDI education index. Higher learning outcomes mean longer school completion. Longer completion raises mean years of schooling. Higher educational attainment raises income and health. The HDI, currently resting on a fragile “medium” perch, begins to climb for the right reasons not because the world’s methodology changed, but because Meghalaya’s children genuinely learned more. That is the positive horizon. It is reachable. The trajectory from 401.6 to 448 across three PGI cycles proves the system can respond. What it needs is not more schemes with painted signboards. It needs sustained, adequately funded, unromantically prioritised investment in learning quality, teacher competency, child nutrition, and community accountability year after year, regardless of election cycles.
The only question that should matter is this – are we spending our money on the things that will change what happens inside Bahduh’s mind or on the things that merely look, from the outside, like they are?
(The writer is a Geospatial Technology Expert).
