Shillong: Meghalaya Education Minister Lahkmen Rymbui on Tuesday informed the House that the education department is seeking a report from all districts to study any dropouts in the last two years owing to the pandemic.
The education minister was responding to a question raised by East Shillong MLA Ampareen Lyngdoh during the Budget Session of the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly.
Referring to a report from the Union Ministry of Education which said 3.5 children are out of school including those who dropped out during the pandemic, Lyngdoh said, “We want to know if the department of education in Meghalaya has conducted any research to identify these problems in our state.”
According to the education ministry report, 17% of these have dropped out of the higher education level and at least 10 million girls are at the risk of dropping out of school.
Rymbui said the full academic session of schools has just started and they are seeking a report from all districts to study if there are any dropouts and, if yes, how many and how to address this issue.
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According to the education minister, a meeting was convened by the Director, Educational Research and Training, on March 8, 2021 before the start of the academic year 2021.
Lyngdoh also mentioned that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) recommended the department should identify vulnerable groups, financial aid should be provided to students across the country, special academic support session should be initiated, and that provision should be made for teachers to undergo adequate training to adapt to the new normal.
The East Shillong MLA asked whether the education minister was aware of the challenges of the SDG and if the education minister could share some of the plans the department is taking to achieve these goals.
Steps taken by Meghalaya Education Department
Education Minister Lahkmen Rymbui said all schools in Meghalaya will establish the Professional Learning Communities (PLC), which are school-based teacher teams, in all government and govt-aided schools to identify the learning gaps through daily lessons and formative assessment. At present, there are more than 800 schools with functional PLCs. The timeline to complete this is August 2022.
Dissemination of common grid wise weekly plans based on the learning outcome to help guide teachers through systematic support system to students. The timeline is from March to September, 2022
Implementation of assessment reform through the new assessment cell in the DERT that will help identify great and subject-wise learning target and progress of students through school based assessment. The timeline is April 2022 onwards.
Another step is the preparation of supplementary grades accredit material.
Dissemination of learning materials through digital mode – Doordarshan Kendra, All India Radio, DERT YouTube channel and offline mode through teachers network is another project for which the timeline is throughout 2022.
Besides these, capacity building and training, identification and training of educational volunteers to act as guide teachers in remote areas to support the learning, timeline is June 2022.
The minister further shared that capacity building of teachers to address learning loss through the training of teachers is also starting from March onwards.
All teachers, school head, school managing committee and members will also complete the training programme on addressing learning loss on DIKSHA online platform, the minister shared.
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