NITI Aayog report flags 74 zero-enrolment, 1,414 single-teacher schools in Meghalaya

SHILLONG, July 10: Meghalaya’s school education system continues to grapple with deep structural challenges despite improvements in the Centre’s Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2.0 for 2025-26.
A recent NITI Aayog report has revealed that the state has 74 government schools with zero enrolment, where 152 teachers continue to be posted, and as many as 1,414 single-teacher schools serving 49,807 students.
The findings come even as Meghalaya moved out of the lowest performance band in the latest PGI, indicating that improvements in governance and infrastructure have yet to translate into better learning outcomes and a more efficient school network.
The NITI Aayog report, School Education System in India: Temporal Analysis and Policy Roadmap for Quality Enhancement, points to a paradox in Meghalaya’s education sector.
While the state reports virtually no teacher vacancies and maintains pupil-teacher ratios that are better than the national average across primary, upper primary, secondary and higher secondary levels, students continue to lag behind their peers nationally.
In the PARAKH Rashtriya Survekshan 2024, Meghalaya scored 47 per cent in Language against the national average of 54 per cent, 29 per cent in Mathematics against 37 per cent, 33 per cent in Science against 40 per cent and 34 per cent in Social Science compared to the national average of 40 per cent.
The report identifies the large number of single-teacher schools as a major challenge affecting the quality of education, particularly in remote and sparsely populated areas where one teacher is often required to handle multiple classes along with administrative responsibilities.
It also flags the existence of schools with no students but where teachers remain posted, recommending that states undertake rationalisation and consolidation of schools with very low or zero enrolment to improve the utilisation of resources. While the report does not specifically recommend closures in Meghalaya, it calls for a review of the viability of such institutions based on local conditions.
The findings complement the Ministry of Education’s PGI 2.0 report, which showed Meghalaya improving its overall score and moving out of the lowest grading category.
However, the PGI also continues to rely on PARAKH learning outcomes, suggesting that while governance, infrastructure and administrative indicators have improved, gains in classroom learning remain limited.
Taken together, the two reports indicate that Meghalaya’s education sector has made progress in strengthening systems and school administration but continues to face significant challenges in delivering quality education.
The state’s improved PGI ranking offers signs of administrative progress, but the persistence of zero-enrolment schools, a large number of single-teacher institutions and below-average learning outcomes suggests that structural reforms remain essential if these gains are to translate into better educational outcomes.
Meghalaya has recorded a major improvement in school education, with its PGI 2.0 score rising from 448 in 2024-25 to 525.71 in 2025-26.
This jump of over 77 points has moved the state from the lowest Akanshi-3 grade to Akanshi-1 — the first time it has exited the bottom category since the Ministry of Education introduced the PGI framework.