The news yesterday that there are more than 100 schools in Meghalaya that did not register a single student who passed their exams (assuming these to be either SSLC or HSSLC) last year made for sad but hardly shocking reading.
That is because there is very little that shocks anymore when one has plumbed the depths that Meghalaya’s education system appears to have done.
It was also no surprise to learn that there are more than 200 functioning schools that have no students to educate. And there are a further 2,269 schools with fewer than 10 students each. These are schools where the staff still turn up for work, though that may be a term applied loosely, and have to be paid, with, for the most part, funds out of the state budget.
What was not covered by the Chief Minister while he laid out these facts is the number of schools that have students but no teachers – either through non-appointment or absenteeism – or teachers who are proxies. There is no shortage in these schools either, if complaints by the public are anything to go by.
Despite all this, it was a shock to the system to learn in 2023 that Meghalaya was at the bottom of the Performance Grading Index, a measure of school education across the country.
This in a state that has taken pride in its quality of schools. Schools that have drawn in students from neighbouring states and even abroad.
But this pride, or some might say arrogance, comes from a privileged point of view. It is what the educated middle class (or those who aspire to this class) think. They went to school in the reputed Catholic-run institutions, which are still held in high regard even though the very older generations will still claim that these schools were much better in the decades gone by when they were stocked with teachers from Ireland or wherever.
The sad reality is that only a tiny minority of the thousands of schools in the state are up to this kind of level. This newspaper often receives complaints, backed up by photographs, of the most dilapidated and decrepit schools that are dotted around our largely rural and poor state. Schools that have been forgotten by the government and by many teachers. It would not be surprising at all to learn that these schools have no students – for who would want to attend when there are holes in the roof, doorless classrooms and the teacher might not even show up?
Can we really expect our politicians to step up and solve these issues? In Meghalaya we have two types of politician, with some crossover – the kind that is uneducated but has risen to a position of power and the other sort who educates their children in other parts of the country or even abroad. These, unfortunately, are the people entrusted with improving our education scenario.
