As many as one in every five schools in Meghalaya do not have toilet facilities for their students, according to data from the Annual Status of Education Report 2022.
The exact figure is 21.4 per cent, which is still an improvement on the 34.9 per cent of schools that did not have toilets in 2010.
Just having a toilet is not of any benefit if it is unusable, however.
According to the data, 34.2 per cent of schools in the state do have toilet facilities but they are not usable. This is down somewhat from the 40.6 per cent that suffered from this state in 2010.
44.7 per cent of schools in the state also do not have separate toilet provision for girl students, though this has come down from 64.8 per cent in 2010.
Other school facilities statistics make for depressing reading too. This includes the fact that only 20.4 per cent of schools have an electricity connection, with only 76.2 per cent of these actually having power on the day the survey team visited.
83.8 per cent of schools do not have a library. This figure has actually worsened since 2010, when 78.0 per cent of schools were found to be without libraries.
And in the digital age, it is shocking to learn that 98.3 per cent of schools do not have a computer for children to use, a figure that has also worsened since 2010 when 97.3 per cent did not have computers. Given the poor electricity connection status, however, it is less surprising to learn that most schools do not have computers available.
The other surprise is that while 92.1 per cent of schools in Meghalaya have facilities to cook free mid-day meals for their students (up from 60.6 per cent in 2010), only 49.1 per cent of them were actually serving the meal on the day of the survey team’s visit.
