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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Problematic report card -Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay

Problematic report card -Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay

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published Published on Aug 2, 2018   modified Modified on Aug 2, 2018
-Frontline.in

A DETAILED report brought out recently by the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s Pratichi Institute, titled “Primary Education in West Bengal: The Scope for Change”, highlights certain major problems that are coming in the way of the proper functioning of the primary education system in the State. While acknowledging that access to primary education has increased significantly and that there has been a perceptible improvement in the pupil-teacher ratio (PTR), the report reveals that the State’s schools suffer from an insufficient provision of human resources, a lack of quality teachers and a shortage of funds. It says there is a necessity to improve the standard of textbooks and the syllabi to ensure quality education.

The report states that the lack of human resources in government-aided schools is primarily due to an actual shortage of teachers, especially for co-curricular activities, on the one hand, and uneven distribution of existing teachers, on the other. Further, the situation has been aggravated by the lack of trained teachers.

There has been remarkable improvement in the average PTR: in 2015-16, it stood at 23 as against 49 in 2004-05. However, in spite of this overall improvement, there are a large number of schools with an adverse PTR of 40, while in some cases it is as low as 12. According to the report, at least 20 per cent of the schools in the State suffer from teacher shortage, while others have an excess number of teachers. The problem of shortage of teachers is particularly acute in the districts of Murshidabad, Malda and Uttar Dinajpur. “The distribution of teachers shows a worrying unevenness—it ranges between 14 and 44. Even more disturbing is the fact that the State has not only failed to abolish the phenomenon of single teacher schools, but their proportion has actually increased from 3.3 per cent in 2014-15 to 4 per cent in 2015-16,” the report states. It points out that around 6.5 per cent of the schools have only one classroom for students of various classes.

The data the Pratichi Institute collected reveal a pattern of spatial inequality in the public provision of primary schools. This is also reflected in the Unified- District Information System for Education (U-DISE), 2015-16, which shows that 847 villages in West Bengal do not have government-run primary schools. At the same time, there are a large number of villages that have more schools than actually required.

The report has brought to the fore the fact that schools are severely underfunded. “But it must be noted that many schools need much greater supportive facilities, both of a basic kind (the schools are still underfunded and under-resourced even in terms of very elementary provisions), and in terms of the lack of skilled instructions—and necessary instruments—for music, dance, drawing and sports. This is a substantial resource need, with a deficit that has been estimated to be, on an average, Rs.69,000 per annum per school (in today’s prices),” wrote Amartya Sen in his foreword to the report.

Midday meal

While the report lauds the improvement in the implementation of the State’s Mid-Day Meal Programme, it does not fail to notice the paucity of funds that continue to remain a source of worry for its proper continuation.

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Frontline.in, 17 August, 2018, https://www.frontline.in/the-nation/article24540297.ece?homepage=true


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