SHILLONG, JULY 21: Education Minister Lahkmen Rymbui on Wednesday rejected a recent report which ranked Meghalaya as the lowest in the Performance, Infrastructure and Equity (PIE) Index 2020-21 in primary and secondary education.

The index was given in the paper titled “The PIE Index 2020-2021: Measuring the health of primary and secondary education systems in India” published by the Observer Research Foundation recently.

“It (report) is done by a private agency and not by the Ministry of Education. The Ministry of Education had given a ranking only the performance grading index (PGI),” Rymbui told reporters.

He however said what they have observed in that report is also not totally untrue because when we first took over the government, we realized that to improve the education in the state, the three pillars – quality education, trained teachers and infrastructure – are important. He said the main concern is infrastructure in the said report.

“As you know the infrastructure of primary schools all over the state are in a very bad shape. How do you expect the government to do online teaching or digital classrooms when there is no roof, when there is no door?” he asked.

In view of this, Rymbui informed that the state government in the last 2-3 years has decided to go for massive investment in the infrastructure of the government schools to improve them.

According to him, the chief minister had already announced improvement of infrastructure in over 1,800 schools.