Meghalaya Shows Improvement In School Education Sector

A Correspondent

SHILLONG: The School Education Quality Index (SEQI) released by the NITI Aayog shows that the Meghalaya has shown an improvement in its overall performance score between 2015-16 and 2016-17.

Meghalaya improved by 14.1 percentage points, thus improving its rank in the process.

Also, Meghalaya is among the four of the eight small States which showed an improvement in their Outcomes category score. Meghalaya improved its Outcomes score by more than five percentage points. Access Outcomes also improved in Meghalaya.

The first edition of SEQI was released on Monday by Dr Rajiv Kumar, Vice-Chairman, NITI Aayog, in the presence of NITI Aayog member Dr Vinod Paul, CEO Amitabh Kant and Rina Ray, Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Human Resource and Development and representatives from the World Bank.

The School Education Quality Index (SEQI) was developed by NITI Aayog to evaluate the performance of States and Union Territories (UTs) in the school education sector.

The index aims to bring an ‘outcomes’ focus to education policy by providing States and UTs with a platform to identify their strengths and weaknesses and undertake requisite course corrections or policy interventions.

Of the five small States that showed an improvement on Equity Outcomes, Meghalaya improved its score by more than 10.0 percentage points.

In Meghalaya, the improvement is driven by an increase in the “Percentage of Entitled CWSN (Children with Special Needs) Receiving Aids and Appliances”.

Meghalaya has also improved in the “Percentage of Teachers Provided with Sanctioned Number of Days of Training”.

Meghalaya has additionally shown a positive change in the “Number of Head-Masters/Principals Recruited Through a Merit-Based Selection System as a Percentage of Total Number of Head-Masters/Principals Recruited” and “Percentage of Schools Meeting Teacher Norms as per RTE in Elementary Schools”.

However, the State in the category of Adjusted Net Enrolment Ratio (NER) at secondary level saw a decrease of five percentage points or more.

2015-16 being the base year the NER at secondary level was 50.3 percentage point whereas in the reference year 2016-17 the percentage points fell to 36.8.

Developed through a collaborative process including key stakeholders such as MHRD, the World Bank and sector experts, the index consists of 30 critical indicators that assess the delivery of quality education.