As teachers continue to protest the implementation of the National Education Policy 2020 in colleges across the state, Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma on Wednesday underlined that decisions of all stakeholders in education should revolve around the interests of students and not otherwise.
Talking about NEP 2020, he spoke at length on the need for colleges to offer a broader range of courses, which necessitates additional resources and infrastructure and financial implications of about Rs 400-500 crore.
His statement came in the wake of teachers from 22 of 75 colleges affiliated to the North Eastern Hill University protesting against the implementation of the four-year degree courses as envisaged under NEP 2020 for lack of infrastructure and proper training.
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"Decisions should be taken by keeping the students' interest and future in mind. The management committee, teachers, officials and political leaders, we all should focus on this and not the pressure and dharnas here and there. These are secondary," the chief minister said, addressing the closing ceremony of the 100-year celebration of Laban Bengali Boys Higher Secondary School here.
He warned that political interference in anything that revolves around education could have an adverse impact on the future of students.
According to the chief minister, "Politics in education is bad. Politicians may want to take decisions for politics. Sometimes, teachers may decide what is good for them and the managing committees may decide due to political influence."
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"While all of these are important, in the last 50 years, we forgot that the centre of all of this is the student," he added.
On NEP 2020, the chief minister said there will be a new syllabus, there will be requirements and that it is a process that goes on and requires huge investments.
"There are challenges. The needs are quite large, we are looking at an investment of Rs 300-400 crore to be able to move forward," he added.
Talking about the complex nature of Meghalaya's education sector, he said the state has over 55,000 teachers and close to 15,000 schools and educational institutes.
As compared to Manipur or Nagaland with similar population structure, the chief minister said these states have around 3000-5000 schools and 18,000 teachers.
"The number of schools is huge. Because of the spread and the numbers, things are not manageable at the level that we want to be," he said, adding that the state government is on the verge of normalisation of certain institutions that would benefit the students.
The chief minister congratulated the school on the historic milestone of 100 years and said it is the vision of the founding members and the commitment and the dedication of the past and present teachers and members of the managing committee that has brought the school to its present glory.
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"I can say confidently that the education sector is one of the top priorities of the government and the government has adopted student-centric policies to better education facilities," he said.
The chief minister emphasized student-centric decision-making and said the education cess collected by the state government, which was lying unused until recently, has been diverted towards improving infrastructure in all government schools.
-With PTI Input
