Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma raised a number of education-related issues with Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on a visit to New Delhi today.
Sangma requested Pradhan to issue necessary directions to conduct a special CUET examination for those students of Meghalaya who missed the said examination due to allotment of CUET examination centres outside the state.
“We have requested GoI (government of India) to consider setting up CUET centres in all 12 districts of Meghalaya in institutions that possess adequate infrastructure and testing facilities,” he said, adding that in the immediate term, the state has suggested that the centres be set up in Shillong, Tura, Jowai, Nongstoiñ and Williamnagar, with coverage spreading to adjoining districts in due course.
During his interaction, he mentioned about the frequent problems faced by teacher training institutions in the state for uploading documents as required and mandated by the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE). He also highlighted frequent glitches on the NCTE website.
In addition, while the central government has established NERIE, the North East Regional Institute of Education, it only has an intake of 50 students for B.Ed course for the whole region, meaning that very few seats are allocated to the host state, Meghalaya.
In a letter submitted to Pradhan, the CM highlighted other issues as well, such as the backlog of untrained teachers. Meghalaya only has five Colleges 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 Diploma in Elementary Education (D.El.Ed) programme is a specifically designed package for in-service untrained teachers working in primary/upper primary schools.
Nearly 35,000 elementary teachers from Meghalaya have attended the offline course successfully between 2013 and 2019. However, the state still has a backlog of 18,900 elementary teachers as it only has seven District Institutes for Education and Training (DIETs) and one teacher training centre with a capacity of 550 per academic session.
Sangma requested the Centre to allow the state to clear the backlog by granting a one-time amnesty for secondary, higher secondary in-service teachers under the IGNOU distance B.Ed programme and for the elementary in-service teachers under the NIOS distance Diploma in Elementary Education programme as a special case.
On the National Education Policy 2020, the CM told the Union minister that Meghalaya is preparing to implement the NEP in its entirety but the state is not equipped with adequate infrastructure and other logistic support that will require additional funds for appointment of teachers, construction of additional classrooms, development of pedagogy resource training, etc, which the central government has been requested to help with.
On the persistent issue of SSA teachers funding, Sangma pointed out that the Centre fell short by Rs 685 crore over the 2018 to 2023 period, releasing Rs 2,722.22 crore when the approved budget was Rs 3,407.47 crore. This harmed the state’s aspiration to fulfil “the NEP 2020 and other quality aspects such as spillover, timely release of teachers’ salary, while in provincialisation of teachers’ post is still ongoing the support of the central government is still required.”
North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU) was also on the list of issues, specifically staffing.
The CM informed the Union minister that the posts of Pro-Vice Chancellor, Registrar, Finance Officer and University Engineer are lying vacant. The post of Controller of Examination is also presently held by someone without an academic background. Further, over 200 positions for teaching faculty and non-teaching staff are lying vacant and have temporarily been filled by contractual workers.
NEHU’s Tura campus is also functioning with a lot of deficiencies, the CM said. The post of Pro-Vice Chancellor has been lying vacant for a long time and there are several others in different departments.
Furthermore, the CM wanted the Centre to open up more departments with futuristic courses in consonance with the NEP on the Tura campus.
Sangma linked the consistent fall of NEHU in national rankings to non-availability of funds for academic improvement and advancement, timely promotions of teachers, overall infrastructure in NEHU, etc.