4,133 schools, zero students, 19,000 teachers: Bengal shocker in Centre’s report

Govt blames ‘data disparities’

School Education Minister Dipak Barman attributed the “disparities” to errors made by some private schools while uploading data on the central portal.

“Private schools did not upload data properly. Some of these schools updated teachers’ information but not students’ details. So, those schools are showing zero students, but they have teachers. We are devising some mechanism to fix such problems. At the same time, almost no teachers were recruited in the last fifteen years because of huge corruption. We are correcting all the processes and hope to overcome such problems by the end of this calendar year,” he said.

“We have started rationalising the teachers’ numbers. We are transferring teachers from schools with excess teachers to schools that have no teachers or only one teacher,” he added.

Second-poorest pupil-teacher ratio

The UDISE+ report also showed that West Bengal has the second-poorest Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR) across the country. The PTR in West Bengal is 30, followed only by Jharkhand at 36.

Last year, this ratio stood at 29 in West Bengal, followed closely by Gujarat and Bihar at 30 each, and Jharkhand at 36.

This year, of the total 93,147 schools in West Bengal, around 8 per cent have 10 or less than 10 enrolments, and 8.5 per cent schools have more than 500 enrolments.

Besides, only 403 of the total schools in the state have digital libraries, while just 23,894 schools have computer facilities, and 18,374 with an internet connection.

CAG flags high dropout rates, teacher shortage

A recent Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report showed high dropout rates after secondary school and 520 schools without teachers. It also said that overcrowded classrooms and poor utilisation of funds have undermined the implementation of the Centre’s Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) in the state.

The performance audit, which examined implementation of the SSA scheme between 2019-20 and 2023-24, found a 28-42 per cent transition loss between the upper primary and higher secondary levels, with financial hardship, early marriage, unwillingness to study, and migration for work emerging as the primary reasons students discontinued their education.

According to the audit, 53 per cent of surveyed students who dropped out cited poverty or financial constraints. Fourteen per cent said they were unwilling to continue studies, 13 per cent migrated for work, while 12 per cent discontinued education because of marriage.

The report also highlighted severe teacher shortages: 520 schools with 8,596 students in total had no teachers at all. As many as 5,152 schools with over 1.76 lakh students had only one teacher each. Meanwhile, 40,530 head teachers had been posted in schools with fewer than 150 students, in violation of the Right To Education Act norms.

The CAG said 29 per cent of primary schools and 30 per cent of upper-primary schools failed to meet prescribed student-teacher ratios because of shortages of 31,684 and 2,058 teachers, respectively. At the higher secondary level, 79 per cent of schools exceeded the prescribed teacher-student ratio.

‘Teacher recruitment scam’ in TMC regime

During the Mamata Banerjee government, large-scale corruption was reported in teacher recruitment, and the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate had arrested then education minister Partha Chatterjee and many TMC leaders and officials for their alleged involvement in such corruption. All of them are now out on bail. The Supreme Court later cancelled more than 25,000 School Service Commission appointments over corruption.