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No of schools disproportionate to Meghalaya’s population

January 17, 2025 by MT Bureau
Categories: , , , , Tags:

Staff Reporter

Shillong, Jan 17: Highlighting the challenges faced by the education sector, Commissioner & Secretary Vijay Mantri has stated that the number of schools in Meghalaya is disproportionately large compared to its population size.

"For example, although Tripura has a larger population, it has only one-third of the schools that Meghalaya has. Manipur, with a similar population, has only 4,617 schools. Additionally, Meghalaya has an unusually high number of aided schools, whereas other states have relatively few. Nationally, aided schools account for less than 5 per cent of the total number of schools, but in Meghalaya, this proportion is 29 per cent,"he said while adding "For comparison, Kerala, with a population of 3.34 crore (Census 2011), which is roughly ten times that of Meghalaya, has the same number of schools—15,864 (source: Ministry of Education, Govt. of India, 2023-24). Similarly, Himachal Pradesh, which has a more challenging terrain than Meghalaya, has 17,826 schools, serving a population of 68.64 lakh."

"This disproportionate number of schools in Meghalaya has resulted in skewed student enrollment, with many schools reporting very low student numbers, including some with zero or just a few students," he added.

He informed that there over 206 schools with zero enrolment and 2269 schools with single digit enrolment of which there are 18 deficit and adhoc schools with zero enrolment and 1141 schools with single digit enrolment while in SSA, there are 30 schools with zero enrolment and 268 single digit enrolment and in government schools, there are 11 schools with zero enrolment and 132 schools with single digit enrolment.

Mantri also pointed out that one reason for the large number of schools is that a single school is often counted multiple times in the data. This occurs when a private school seeks multiple grants from the government. For example, a school named XYZ School may be counted as four separate schools, even though it is managed and owned by a single entity.

Meghalaya Times

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