Change of government does nothing when it comes to the education sector in the state of Manipur. The last few decades witness private run schools overriding the government run schools both in High School Leaving Certificate examination as well as the Higher Secondary Schools Examination conducted by the Board of Higher Secondary Education Manipur and Council of Higher Secondary Education Manipur respectively. The recently declared result of both the examination spelled out the reality of what is going on to the government run schools of the state which have well qualified and better pay than those in the private run schools. It is not only the high school or higher secondary level, but also in the primary and elementary level too, the government run schools are much behind than those of the private schools. The perfect example is the chaos in most of the private schools during admission time at primary level.
The reality is known to everyone, but what is unfortunate is the government never wanted to accept that something is seriously wrong with the education department. Recently, the Education Minister M. Okendro was quoted as saying that their government under the leadership of Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh is giving top priority to education and health sector. The same words were heard some two and half years back when he was first inducted as the Education Minister under the chief ministership of Okram Ibobi Singh. Media still is a witness about the strong commitment of angry young Minister Moirangthem Okendro singh promising to resign from the portfolio if he failed to bring any change to the education scenario of the state. The promise that he made remain as a mockery to the people of the state. Nothing effective change to improve the scenario was seen during his entire period.
The last three years showed declined in the pass percentage in both the HSLC and HSS examination, which means that the education sector is even deteriorated from before (before Okendro become the education Minister).
What is more surprising is that the Minister still failed to acknowledge that something is seriously wrong to the education sector and he is not capable of diagnosing as providing cure to the ailment. Instead he is venturing out another new policy to ruin the already ruined government schools by selecting few, most likely to save his image from wrongs he has been doing.
In the just declared examination of the High School Leaving certificate examination conducted by the Board of Secondary Education Manipur, a total of 21225 students were declared passed. The Education Minister had selected 8 government run higher secondary schools as a new initiative to provide quality education to students who had cleared the HSLC examination. As per the advertisement appeared at few selected daily newspapers the total capacity of this 8 school is only 4670. Which means the government is leaving the fate of 16555 students at their owned risk. Out of these students some parents might be able to sent their wards to outside the state or to some private run schools for better studies but majority would not be able to do so. When the Hon’ble Education Minister take up this new initiative he seem to have forgotten that the 16000 plus students may choose some other way which may be more notorious than those in early 2000s as hopes don’t seem to float for them. Besides appointing some few MCS officers to look after these selected schools is something like derecognising the role of head Master or principal of the schools. When the man in the top fails those under him rots.
