MAT Awards: Quality students and quality education

DIMAPUR, OCTOBER 7 : Five Naga students were on Friday awarded the prestigious Mayangnokcha awards for academic excellence – for their respective performances in this year’s HSLC examination – at an awards ceremony hosted at, and by, Dimapur Mission Higher Secondary School.

This year’s roll of honour, the 23rd in all, included: Phepon P Meya, winner of Mayangnokcha Award for Academic Excellence (overall topper among Naga students); P Tanghiu Khiamniungan, winner of MAT-NE Sun Award for Subject Topper in English; Alemzungba Jamir, winner of MAT-Rockdale Award for Subject Topper in Ao and MAT-YRSD Award for Subject Topper in Social Sciences; Tongpangtangla, winner of MAT-Tir Yimyim Award for Subject Topper in Science; and Nusavolu Nyekha, winner of MAT-EFoM Award for Subject Topper in Mathematics.
The awards are an initiative of Mayangnokcha Award Trust (MAT), instituted in honour of the educationist Mayangnokcha, the first graduate among the Aos and the second among the Nagas. He was awarded the certificate of Gallantry by the British government in 1945; the Order of British Empire (OBE) in 1946; and the Padmashree award in 1984.

This was the first occasion that the awards ceremony was held here in Dimapur.

What is quality education?

Delivered by one of the trustees, Er Moa Aier, the keynote address of this year’s MAT Awards was centred on the question of quality education. According to Aier, though the “talk about quality education” has taken centre-stage as front page news in recent times, no one has attempted to define it.

“But the problem is: what is ‘quality education?’ Nobody seems to even try and define what is ‘quality education’. It is our sincere contention that in order to move forward, we first need to define or at least describe what is ‘quality education’. Such a definition must be first formulated, accepted and incorporated into a state education policy and only then, lay a roadmap towards achieving the same,” he said.

Under Nagaland Board of School Education, according to Aier, the total percentage of HSLC students who enrolled in private schools in the year 2006 was 69%. The corresponding number for government schools was 31%.

Ten years on, in 2016, the figures read 73% for private schools and 27% for government schools. Against this, Aier pointed out, school education was allotted the largest share of fund with 10.6% out of the Nagaland state budget for 2016-17 of Rs 13,000 crore.

“Excluding scholarships, spending by the state government on private schools which constitutes 73% (80% if other Boards are included) of the total enrolled students for HSLC exams, and 86% of the tota qualified under NBSE HSLC during 2016, was less then Rs 0.5 cr (practically 0%) against the state budget of Rs 13,000 cr plus,” he said.

When such was the status of enrolment, the school results and the nature of funding support from the government, “it is very difficult to understand what kind of ‘quality education’ that the policymakers has in mind and wishes to achieve”, Aier said.

Though quality education could be difficult to define, “more objectively, it can be described by some of its attributes and products”, according to Aier. “Attributes in the form of the systems and parameters that are in place for delivery of education, and products in the form of its graduates and their contribution and usefulness in society.”

Aier informed that the MAT, with the support of the state government, had conducted a pilot School Assessment Program during 2009-11. “The MAT submitted a detailed proposal during 2011 to the state government to institutionalise the School Assessment and Accreditation Programme, and to make it a state policy. We believe that if this is implemented, the thirst and the cry for ‘quality education’ in Nagaland can be addressed to a very large extent.”

Parliamentary secretary for Art and Culture, E Eshak Konyak was the guest of honour at the occasion and presented the awards to the winners.