Dimapur, August 6 (EMN): Recently instated minister for School Education and Parliamentary Affairs, Tokheho Yepthomis has suggested that the decision to ‘communitise’ school education in the state has failed to harvest ‘encouraging’ outcome.
In a press release issued on Sunday, the minister stated: “The communitisation of schools appear to be not very encouraging as most of the school management committees/boards do not want to be inspected by the departmental officers and interference by the department is often viewed as undesirable. The problem of misuse of sanctioned funds and non-submission of utilization certificates are among the biggest bottlenecks in delivering the goods to the grassroots”.
According to him, it was also a fact that there were huge numbers of proxy teachers all over the state. “This is not the only problem as there are many teachers attached to various district and sub-division offices. The directorate of School Education alone has 74 teachers attached to its office. In addition to this, some of the upgraded schools (Middle, High and Higher Secondary Schools) have very little or no enrolment”.
Altogether, he informed, the department has roughly eleven thousand teachers employed in elementary as well as higher sections even ‘there has been a hue and cry over poor results in government schools’.
“Another problem being faced by the department is the fate of Hindi teachers appointed under the ‘Appointment of Language Teachers’ which is a centrally sponsored scheme. During the 10 years’ span of this scheme, Nagaland was one of the four states which availed the benefits of this scheme with the financial year 2016-17 being the terminal year as per the laid down norms and 31st March 2017 being the end date of the scheme after which the responsibility of maintenance of Hindi teachers shall rest upon the concerned state governments/UT administrations. Accordingly, the central government’s decision to discontinue the scheme was conveyed to the concerned states on 8th March, 2017”.
The minister also suggested that there was a possibility for the central government to discontinue the RMSA and SSA schemes unless the government and the concerned citizens were careful in the management of these schemes.
“Unless the elected members, concerned citizens and the school managing committees/boards come together to effectively clean these compounding menaces, the government of the day alone cannot take the responsibility”, he stated.
While stating that the time has come to revamp the ‘entire system’, Yepthomi claimed that the department concerned was ‘fully equipped to take corrective measures’ in order to ‘revolutionize the existing system of education and its dissemination in Nagaland’.
