As another new minister takes charge of the school education department in the state, like his predecessors he has also quite honestly said that the department has genuine problems. Besides the various unethical practices that has been plaguing the schools, the minister also touched on a very sensitive but undoubtedly relevant area in his statement on the workings of the system. He said that the communitisation committee members of the schools were also uncooperative especially when inspections are undertaken by the officials of the department with likely instances of misuse of funds as utilisation reports of sanctioned money is usually not submitted.
The schools are currently managed by the government appointed teachers with the aid of School Management Committees in the urban areas and the Village Education Committees in the rural areas. Along with the members of the community with reservations for women members and ex-officio members from the village or colony councils it also has to select a fulltime church member as one of the members in the committee. The Naga people gave the world the concept of communitisation where community is directly involved with developmental activities, however the likely failure of communitisation especially in the school education department is taking place right in its place of birth. One primary reason can be because the citizens of the state including the successive lawmakers and bureaucrats are unable to correctly differentiate and form a balance between employment and education. Since statehood, the education to employment and the overall human development in the state is a continuing conundrum without any solution. The problem is profound but the political will to collectively tackle it has failed over the years. Added to it is the truism of the unending Naga political issue that has affected every walk of life of the citizens of the state. Then comes the problem of importing communitisation to the education department. If an effort is made to differentiate the other areas where communitisation worked and why it might be failing in the education department, it may not require an in-depth research. Some notable committees are like the Water and Sanitation board aka WATSAN, Village/Urban Electricity Monitoring board, Village Development Board etc. that are all less specialised unlike education and healthcare. Secondly, for the other committees though it demands immediate attention it also gets immediate results. Even in the case of health centres in the rural areas, it is usually for emergency services only. Schools on the other hand needs time and takes years to nurture and educate children and to grow and transform itself into a reputed place of learning. Unfortunately, in some cases the community is more interested in the immediate benefits from the schools like contract works, other funds meant to be used for the welfare of the children and employment. As the school’s reputation goes down gradually the enrolment rate would surely drop over the years with more and more of the rural children migrating to the towns for studies. However, with one of the best pay packages among the government departments, the importance of employment has finally eclipsed education and so schools are opened in every possible place in the state; some non-existent ones too. The signs of implosion has already started in the department and it is pertinent to stop this vicious cycle immediately.
