Krishnagar, Nov. 4: A potter and a rickshaw van-puller were among the first to point out that some primary school teachers in Nadia were simply not good enough.

A team of retired headmasters and teachers sent across the district to fathom the quality of teaching in nearly 3,000 primary schools has confirmed that ? its report says about 20 per cent primary teachers are “unfit” to teach.

About 1,500 teachers out of 8,000 do not have the “skill and attitude” to teach at the primary level, which has about nine lakh students in Nadia.

The district school education authorities constituted the 15-member team in February following a spate of complaints from parents.

In January, Shasthi Pal, a potter, went through his son’s arithmetic homework and found that Milan ? a Class III student of Dohradaha Primary School, Karimpur ? had divided 70 by 2 and derived 33. In another sum, he divided 25 by 3 and got 5. Both answers had been marked correct. In English, Milan had spelt Europe as Europ and the teacher had overlooked the error.

The exercise books in hand, Shasthi went to the office of Birendranath Chatterjee, the district inspector of primary schools, and pointed out the mistakes.

Investigations by Chatterjee’s office revealed that Milan’s was not an isolated case. Another Class III student of the same school, Samar Pal, had spelt ocean as ocian and the teacher had ticked it right. There were at least a dozen other such mistakes.

Two months ago, Krishna Roy, a rickshaw van-puller came up with a similar complaint ? his three sons studying in Majdia Primary School were being promoted every year but they could not even write their names correctly.

The district education authorities then set up the truth team, which submitted its report days before Durga Puja.

“They have asked us to act against about 1,500 idle and inefficient teachers. About 1,000 of them were said to be totally incapable,” said Bibhash Biswas, the chairman of the district primary school council.

Nohit Biswas, a retired headmaster who was part of the team, rued that some of the teachers “take it easy thinking that the mostly-poor parents will not be able to pick on their mistakes”.

The findings also showed that many of them were ageing and did not spend enough time with the students.

According to Bibhash Biswas, about 30 per cent of the students can be described as “near illiterate”, though they are being promoted following the government’s promote-all policy at the primary level.

The education authorities in the district had earlier decided to set common question papers for the half-yearly and annual exams in primary schools. The new system ? the papers will be prepared by the district primary school council ? is expected to come into effect this winter, marking the state’s first effort to ensure a uniform standard at this level.

“I have asked each school circle inspector to go to the teachers identified by the truth team. We cannot allow such inferior quality teaching in our schools,” the council chairman said.