Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma today inaugurated the NEC-funded Building, RUSA funded Infrastructure and Approach Road to College of Teacher Education (PGT) at Shillong.
Speaking during the inaugural address, the chief minister said there is an urgent need for the expansion of the college with the growing demand.
Sangma said education has been one of the top priorities of the State government in spite of numerous challenges in the sector in terms of lack of infrastructure, training for teachers and different category of teachers. However, he said these cannot be changed in a short time as it requires a systematic change.
He also informed that cess collected from minerals is being used in education for which is it meant.
The chief minister also informed that government works on budget that is allotted for every department and a balance has to be maintained among different sectors.
“As much as education is important there are other sectors like health, roads, agriculture, youth, women all these sectors are important and government has to strike a balance among different sectors and there in comes the question of financing these sectors therefore streamlining education is a huge challenge,” he said. However, he added that small steps can be taken with a momentum to make a difference.
He also said that teachers play a very crucial role and the different teacher training programmes of the government focuses on holistic training of the teachers. He urged the college to continue to focus on compassion, professional excellence and ethically sound teachers which are crucial aspects of teacher training to achieve the ultimate object of producing responsible and productive citizens which is also the larger goal of the government.
