Govt constitutes MSEC to usher reforms in the state’s education system

The four-member MSEC has been asked to come up with a solution to address the presence of too many categories of schools in Meghalaya.

The MSEC will comprise a chairperson, two advisers and one secretary.

After chairing a cabinet meeting, Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma said, “It is important to note that this is one of the points that we have been talking for a very long time and we strongly feel that we need to ensure that a full-fledged commission that works and look into all aspects of education is there.”

He said “The mandate of the MSEC is to advise the government of Meghalaya on matters relating to schools and colleges, their institutional structures, their salary structures, their overall school and college management functioning and accountability and to produce a concrete solution and strategic recommendations for ushering reforms in the education system for the perspective of NEP 2020 and also the state education policy and fulfilling its various principles and articulations.”

He said the MSEC will also look into the management of aided schools and institutions, their performance concerning general functioning, activities, operations, accountability of the school managing committees (SMCs) and the governing bodies (GBs).

“Consolidation of the different categories of aided schools, colleges and systems for granting and upgrading aided status of colleges and schools. Establishment of effective mechanisms to ensure pay parity with regards to salary of teachers under the different aided categories with respect to government teachers, the way forward for issues pertaining to teachers under SSA, rationalization of schools specially with regards to unviable schools, surplus schools, low enrolment schools, zero enrolment schools, single digit enrolment schools and single teacher school and problems relating to availability of language teachers especially in rural areas,” he added.

When asked, Sangma said the commission will also be asked to look into the nitty-gritty of what are the complications and really come up with viable solutions as to how we could reduce the categories of schools.

“As I said this of course as a department, as chief minister sometimes it is not possible for us to give the kind of focus on these issues and hence we feel that an education commission will be able to do justice to ensure that to a large extent we will be able to resolve this issue. We are hoping the education commission will be able to give us necessary suggestions on how we could address these issues,” he added.

Meanwhile, the chief minister further informed that the efforts that have been put in by the government of Meghalaya in the last four years has started showing some improvement.

“Under the PGI scores that comes out from Niti Aayog, I am happy to inform you that the Niti Aayog has notified that in terms of infrastructure and facilities, Meghalaya is ranked number 2 in the sense that the second highest improvement in the country in terms of infrastructure has happened in the education sector in Meghalaya.

We are the highest improved state in the North East. Other areas like equity also we are the highest improved state in the NE and the 5^th highest improved state in India.

In fact, overall in all the five indexes by the PGI Niti Aayog for the education sector, they have ranked Meghalaya as the fifth highest improved state in the country and the second highest improved state in the North East.”

By Our Reporter