Department of School Education (DoSE) has reacted to the Rising People’s Party (RPP)’s demand for abolishing the post of principal director (PD) school education and allegations over the poor performance of government schools in the recently declared results of HSLC examinations 2022.
In a press release, the principal director (PD) school education, Shanavas C, stated that the matter of keeping IAS officers as principal director comes under the purview of the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions (Department of Personnel and Training). PD stated that the cadre allotment was done vide the Indian Administrative Service (Fixation of Cadre Strength) Fourth Amendment Regulations, 2015 (Notification No. G.S.R. 1021(E), Dated, December 30, 2015 and the department was obliged to follow the regulations.
With regard to the decrease in pass percentage of government school students, PD accepted the poor performance. However, he said that there was overall decrease in pass percentage in the state level as well as in private schools due to the pandemic related issues. PD pointed out that the candidates of the HSLC 2022 batch suffered considerable amount of learning loss when they were in class IX in the year 2020 as well as in class X during the year 2021.
In spite of the best efforts of the department to rationalize teachers, PD said the state faced acute shortage of Mathematics and Science teachers, adding “this too is a reason behind the decline in the examination results.”
As approved by the Cabinet, PD said the department has already issued notification for recruitment of 63 numbers of Graduate Teachers (Maths) and 92 numbers of Graduate Teachers (Science). He disclosed that recruitment process would be completed soon and would help the department to address the issue of shortage of Maths & Science teachers. PD stated that the issue of poor performance of students from government schools was a complex issue.
Out of 251 government high schools, PD said nearly 135 schools were not having headmasters due to court cases between different groups of teachers. Informing that the department was now finalising the seniority of graduate teachers, PD said promotions to the post of assistant headmasters would be carried out shortly.
Another issue faced by the department, PD said was the instability in managing the posts of district education offices (DEOs) and sub divisional education offices (SDEOs). In educational administration, PD said the DEOs and SDEOs play important roles in the inspection and supervision for improvement of school administration.
He said that “unfortunately” officers at the verge of retirement were posted to those crucial posts due to unavailability of sufficient number of eligible officers with reasonable service period remaining. PD said that “this short coming of instability” in the district and sub divisional educational administration remained unresolved.
With regard to the Light House—Nagaland Enhancing Classroom Teaching and Resources (NECTAR) project, PD said it was a five-year mega project, which was aimed at bringing systematic changes from the grassroots level of the education system.
Stating that the project was introduced in 2021, PD said planning and analysing the present status of the system was essential for taking forward the project to the implementation stage.
He said the department has completed preparation of the position papers and changes could be brought gradually once the project was implemented starting from the grassroots level.
Thursday, April 2, 2026