Meghalaya Govt to rationalise 600 schools, improve infrastructure this year
The state’s education department has set a target to rationalise over 600 government and Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) schools, which are located next to each other, under the first phase within this year.
The objective is to minimize the budget on salary expenditure for teachers. At present, Meghalaya is spending over Rs 2400 crore on payment of salaries to over 40,000 teachers of which only 7000 are government teachers.
Informing this on Tuesday, Commissioner & Secretary in-charge Education Vijay Kumar Mantri said, “We are trying to rationalise 600 government and SSA schools, which are located next to each other in the first phase.”
“In principle SSA is a government school. You can’t have two government schools’ side by side. So, we are trying to rationalise and we will see the number how many? We are targeting 600 schools this year,” he added.
Mantri informed that the department is also encouraging private schools for starting the rationalisation process.
“Because there are deficit schools where teachers are receiving government pay scale. So, we have asked District School Education Officers (DSEOs) to rationalise in case a particular school doesn’t have students then you shift and transfer the teacher to nearby school where there is more enrolment,” he stated.
According to him, Meghalaya has over 55,000 teachers compared to other North Eastern states.
Mantri said due to this issue, very little budget is available for improving school infrastructure in the state while responding to a query on the dilapidated condition of school buildings in the different parts of the state.
“Infrastructure is a big hurdle of course. If you see now in the education budget, Rs 2400 crore are going only for salaries so very little budget is available for the improving infrastructure and improving infrastructure is very essential because having said that we received lots of rainfall and continuous maintenance is a big thing. So, wherever the schools we have not intervened and wherever we have not given support to them they are facing lots of difficulties and problems.”
He however informed that the department under the Asian Development Bank (ADB) scheme is taking up 65 schools for upgradation and building new classrooms.
“We also have mission education and under this, two phases have already happened and lots of schools are there. More schools will be covered under the third phase and subsequent phases.
Based on the budget allocated, we are taking up phase by phase.”
Asked, the commissioner & secretary said, “Only for schools, Rs 2400 crore goes to salaries of teachers. For the colleges, another Rs 300 crore annually and the government is supporting 40,000 teachers and out of this, only 7000 are government teachers and remaining are all private teachers.”
“Therefore, rationalisation is important and internally we have started the process where we are rationalising between SSA and the government. SSA school is there and government school – we are rationalising by merging the teachers and students. That way at least we can have manageable number of teachers so then the salary budget can come down and we can spend more on infrastructure,” he asserted.
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