Pradhan calls for AI, skills focus in state’s education reforms

From CK Nayak

From CK Nayak

NEW DELHI, May 25: Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma on Monday made a detailed presentation on the state’s roadmap before Union Minister for Education Dharmendra Pradhan, seeking to improve Meghalaya’s Performance Grading Index (PGI), which has remained at the bottom of the rankings for the past three years.

Sangma said that the Education Department had identi-fied major gaps in learning outcomes and initiated structural reforms to address long-standing challenges affecting the sector. Among the key concerns highlighted were the unusu-ally high number of schools, fragmented resource utilisation, multiple layers of grant-in-aid systems, and administrative complexities.

The Chief Minister pointed out that, with a population of around 30 lakhs, the state has nearly 14,600 schools — the highest among Northeastern states excluding Assam and combined strength of some states. There are a large number of teachers but both enrolment and pass out rates are very low.

He said the government has launched a major school consolidation exercise to optimise infrastructure, improve student-teacher ratios, and ensure better access to laboratories and digital learning facilities. In total 3,198 schools have already been rationalised out of 14,582 schools across the state to ensure optimum utilisation of resources.

He also highlighted reforms including streamlining grant-in-aid mechanisms, implementing a unified pay structure for teachers including SSA teachers, (Contd on P-7)