Mission Shiksha, the grand plan in the offing to revive the school education landscape of Arunachal Pradesh has generated a fair amount of hope among the state’s people. Although it’s still at a conceptual stage and will take time to get a final shape, from so far that has transpired, it appears that technological interventions have been mooted as a principal tool in the restructuring process. While this sounds good and is absolutely necessary for the Arunachal of tomorrow, singularly it can’t do much to herald perceptible changes the sector badly needs. It will not require a hawk-eyed view to point out the ailments- infrastructure and quality manpower- right from  lower nursery to post-matric stage. An infusion of a correct dose of technology in the teaching-learning process can only supplement the overall revival process. The thrust, as the administration and bureaucracy must have felt time and again, should be on these fundamentals.

To have a good understanding of where the state actually stands nationally in terms of school education, the latest edition ( 2019-20) of the Performance Grading Index (PGI) released earlier this month by the Union Education Ministry needs to be referred to. Although introduced recently, the index has received acceptance since it mirrors the performance level of states and data have been drawn from several sources, including the Unified District Information System for Education Plus, National Achievement Survey and Mid-Day Meal. Out of a total marks of 1000, as many as 70 parameters which are thereby grouped under five broad categories such as Access (eg. enrolment ratio, transition rate and retention rate); Governance and Management; Infrastructure; Equity (difference in performance between scheduled caste students and general category students) and Learning Outcomes (average score in mathematics, science, languages and social science) have been taken into account. The chief objective of the PGI is to make an undistorted reflection of the current standings of states, which for the weaker ones will otherwise serve as a message to initiate prompt rectifications.

 In this edition, while it will be a matter of satisfaction that Arunachal has improved its score by 20% , it is too little to wipe out the grief that even after this ‘promotion’, the state has scored 689, which places it among the most-poor-performing states, 3^rd from the bottom to be exact, to be followed by Nagaland (667) and Meghalaya (649). This document should serve as yet another wake-up call for the state and only rational thinking can bring some revolutionary changes. This is not a Himalayan task. Taking care of the fundamentals such as rebuilding the now infinitely-depreciated infra, building new ones, appointing committed and quality teachers, checking wastage of funds will take the graph in the right direction.

The overall strategy should ideally incorporate the required components in right measures.

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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