Brick by brick, Arunachal Pradesh is rebuilding the classrooms its children deserve. Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu on Tuesday, September 29, 2026, highlighted the construction of a modern Government Higher Secondary School at Boleng — the headquarters of Siang district — calling it a direct reflection of the state's drive to retire crumbling school buildings and replace them with safe, contemporary infrastructure.

Old walls down, new classrooms rising in Siang

Boleng, a remote riverine town tucked deep in the Siang valley, is not where most infrastructure spotlights fall. That is precisely what makes CM Khandu's post notable. 'It feels good to see government schools like this taking shape in our districts,' he wrote, framing the project not as an isolated event but as part of a 'continued effort' to replace 'old, dilapidated school buildings with modern, safe and better infrastructure for our children.'

The challenge is real. Arunachal Pradesh's terrain — deep gorges, seismic-zone ridgelines, monsoon-battered valleys — has historically made school construction costly and slow. Many older school buildings across remote districts were built decades ago with materials and standards that have long since become unsafe.

Central funding and the Samagra Shiksha framework

The state has aligned these upgrades with Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, the integrated central school education scheme launched in 2018 that pools funding for infrastructure improvement, quality enhancement, and teacher training across all states. For a frontier state like Arunachal Pradesh, where private school alternatives are scarce, the government school is often the only school — which makes the condition of every building a direct equity issue.

District administrations and the state education department have been executing phased replacements under this framework, with Boleng's new higher secondary school appearing to be among the more recent completions under that pipeline.

What the Boleng school signals for Northeast education

The broader Northeast has seen a push over the past several years to close the infrastructure gap between its remote districts and the national average. CM Khandu, who has led the state since 2016, has consistently positioned education infrastructure as a foundation for longer-term development — the logic being that no amount of curriculum reform lands if the roof leaks or the walls are unsafe.

Three images shared alongside the post show the completed structure, giving residents and policymakers a concrete marker against which future progress — or stagnation — can be measured.

The real test now is replication: whether the pace and quality visible at Boleng can reach the dozens of other remote district schools still waiting for the same upgrade.