Shillong: West Shillong MLA Paul Lyngdoh wants an immediate education reforms commission. He says Meghalaya’s school system grew too fast and lacks quality. The state currently sits at the bottom of the Northeast in performance. While PISA scores rose from 448.0 in 2024-25 to 525.71 in 2025-26, the progress is slow. Lyngdoh highlighted that Shillong once stood as a premier education hub. He pointed to St. Edmund’s College and its record of producing two former Chief Election Commissioners and four chief ministers. The state faces massive fragmentation with 14,500 schools. This includes 206 institutions with zero students and 2,269 with fewer than 10. Governance hits 85.6 percent, yet teacher education remains near the national floor. He argued the state must stop blindly adopting NCERT rules without retraining staff.
Lyngdoh urged officials to heed the words of W.B. Yeats, stating, “education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a spark.” He criticized the December SSLC schedule and the removal of the Best of Five system. Education Minister Lahkmen Rymbui acknowledged the gaps. He stated that the government treats the issue as a work in progress. Rymbui cited a Rs 2,000 crore price tag just to fix infrastructure. The state has launched Missions 1 through 4 to address these failures. Officials are now trying to shed the stigma that government schools act as orphans.
The administration has made parent-teacher meetings mandatory. They are pushing local communities to adopt schools. Rymbui noted that 23,000 teachers lacked job security until the new pay framework arrived. Recruitment is now allowed, and officials are moving toward teacher rationalization. The state has also opened 450 CUET and NEET nodes with 1,000 more planned. Rymbui emphasized that his team is moving carefully. “Have we accomplished? No, it is a work in progress. Let us work one step at a time, we will reach our destination,” Rymbui said.
Updated at 28th August 2026 at 2:00pm
Lyngdoh also flagged the grip of mobile phones on students. He warned that Meghalaya heads in the wrong direction while nations in Europe and Australia restrict cellphone use for minors. Citing an eight-year-old Shillong girl with 8,000 social media followers, he demanded a digital detox to curb screen-linked anxiety, depression, and sleep loss. He specifically attacked the habit of teachers sending assignments to parents via phone, calling it an unhealthy tether to devices. He leaned on a 2025 study titled Between Lights and Learning, which mapped how social media hollows out academic focus in Jowai, and pressed the government to partner with health experts to track smartphone addiction.
Rymbui countered by listing additional policy moves. He highlighted integrated skill learning for rural youth, cabinet approval of the Education Commission Report, and anti-drug campaigns in schools. To prevent students from losing a full academic year, he noted the introduction of two board exam opportunities. He also defended the use of floating posts as a tactical fix for single-teacher schools, aiming to shore up staffing levels without waiting for a full, slow-moving audit.
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