SHILLONG, Sept 16: Minister in-charge Education Lahkmen Rymbui on Friday said the government is working on long-term solutions after the state was ranked very low as per the performance grading index (PGI).

“The government is aware of the state PGI ranking, which is challenging. Nevertheless, it is admittedly taken as a strong indication that the state needs to revamp and make hard decisions to harmonize the efforts of the department in convergence with all stakeholders,” Rymbui said in his reply to a call attention notice moved by Mawsynram legislator Himalaya Shangpliang in the Assembly.

“I would like to reiterate that the state government is seriously studying the matter from all angles. I request all to support the state government and the education department to come out with an appropriate long-term solution,” he said.

The minister said that the state PGI scores in learning outcomes and quality is admittedly low for several reasons and the state needs to work on providing innovative interventions to improve the learning outcome of the students.

He said there is no ready-made or short-term solution, the state education department with the active support of the government both at central and state requires undertaking a long-term solution and needs to begin from provision of quality and safe infrastructure.

Under PGI, the infrastructure & facilities includes classroom, ICT/smart classes, library/reading corner, functional toilets, safe drinking water supply, electrification, vocational labs/workshop, midday meal, integrated science lab, distribution of uniform and free textbooks, besides functional school building.

Stating that the state has shown remarkable improvement in the indicators, he said, however, the state needs to focus on the adjusted net enrolment rate (ANER) at secondary level, retention rate at elementary and secondary level and take steps to identify out-of-school children and mainstreaming.

In the equity outcomes, the state has shown an overall improvement under this except CWSN indicators where the state requires to improve immensely.

Whereas, the state faced challenges in governance processes, whereby, the state needs to focus on percentage of teachers whose unique ID is seeded in any electronic database of the state government administration, percentage of upper primary schools meeting norms of subject – teacher as per RTE, number of teachers transferred through a transparent online system as percentage of total number of teachers transferred and percentage of state budget share spent on school education to total state budget, he added.

With regards to digital infrastructure, Rymbui said the department of education has implemented a comprehensive teachers information management system (TIMS) for all teachers working at various schools and colleges across the state.

The department has all the data pertaining to teachers, schools and colleges in digital form as database records which would be used to generate various MIS reports. The TIMS is conceptualized and developed to address many PGI indicators such as transparency of recruitment, posting, transfers, teacher’s attendance, promotion, efficiency bar, increment and salary transfer

He said in order to augment the digital infrastructure in the state, the state shall implement the Vidya Samiksha Kendra (VSK) or the command and control centre which is a learning management and tracking system (LMS) that will focus on improving learning outcomes and learning levels of students through a robust system of online assignments, projects and regular assessment of students’ performance that is formative, competency-based and tests higher-order skills, such as critical thinking and conceptual clarity.

This will be executed in a learning management tracking system through a central monitoring system/component which will also track students’ progress throughout the school years in order to promote their continuous learning and development, he said adding that this is an important initiative towards transforming assessment in line with the goals of NEP – 2020.

With regards to school building infrastructure and safety to children, the minister said that the state has addressed the infrastructure facilities and has supported 208 schools at Rs 109.33 crore in phase-I, 111 schools at Rs 100 crore in phase-II and 1878 schools at Rs 86.76 crore in phase-III to be covered under state funding for infrastructure improvement and upgradation.