Urging immediate action to be taken with regard to Meghalaya's crumbling education system, Chief Minister Conrad Sangma wrote a letter to the Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, urging him to resolve the issues.
The letter highlights five key areas that require urgent attention and intervention to enhance the quality of teaching and learning in Meghalaya which bears a direct impact on the quality of teaching and learning, thereby, affecting the performance of students and their learning outcomes, as per ANI.
Shortage of teachers
The first concern that was raised by Sangma refers to the shortage of trained teachers in Meghalaya due to limited institutional facilities. The letter also mentions that the state has only five College of Teacher Education (CTE) with an intake capacity of only 350 seats per academic year against a backlog of 5,548 secondary and 2,043 higher secondary untrained teachers.
The capacity to carry out BEd courses are presently very low and this has led to less output of teachers as BEd is a minimum pre-service professional qualification for secondary and higher education teachers.
It further raised the concern about the backlog of 18,900 untrained elementary teachers as the state has only seven DIETs (District Institute of Education and Training) and one Teacher Training Centre with an intake of 550 trainees per academic session, posing a huge challenge to bridge this gap.
The letter also states that although efforts have been made to meet the gap the state has a huge backlog of 18,900 teachers.
"The Diploma in Elementary Education (D.El.Ed) programme has been of immense support to the State of Meghalaya to bridge the backlog of untrained teachers, wherein 34,730 Elementary Teachers of Meghalaya attended the Off-line course successfully during the year 2013 to 2019. Despite these efforts, the States still have a huge backlog of 18900 untrained Elementary Teachers," the letter reads.
The minister also urges the union education minister to allow the state government to clear the backlog as a one-time amnesty programme for the secondary, higher secondary in-service teachers of Meghalaya under the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) - Programmes - Distance - Bachelor of Education (BEd) and for the elementary in-service teachers of Meghalaya under the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) - Programme - Distance Mode - Diploma in Elementary Education Programme as a special case.
NEP and implementation
CM Conrad Sangma also emphasised the challenges faced by the state in implementing the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. It was added in the letter that the government is trying to implement the NEP but the state is lacking majorly the adequate infrastructure and other logistic support that will require additional funds for the appointment of teachers, construction of an additional classroom, development of Pedagogy Resource Training, ECCE development, school complexes and so on and for this the government is seeking additional assistance from the Central Government.
Furthermore, CM Sangma highlighted the shortfall in funding under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and urged a reconsideration of the funding pattern.
