Calcutta/Burdwan, Nov. 15: For the first time in its 28 years, the Left Front government has rapped the CPM-controlled district primary education councils for failing to meet targets set for the development of education in the state.

“The district primary councils enjoy a lot of power. The idea behind empowering them was to ensure that they independently oversee the overall development of education even in remote rural areas. But we are unhappy with the poor performance of some of the councils,” school education minister Kanti Biswas said.

He ticked off heads of the district primary councils despite their proximity to Alimuddin Street while reviewing the progress of primary education at a meeting on October 9. The minister expressed his anger in the presence of representatives of many other ag- encies associated with child- ren’s education, parents and teachers’ bodies, peasants’ organisations and children and women’s welfare associations.

He took the councils to task for not taking enough initiatives to fill up vacant teaching posts in primary schools. The power to oversee the recruitment of teachers in the state’s 60,000-plus primary schools lies with the district councils.

“There should not be a single school with only one teacher. Yet there are several thousand single-teacher schools. We have made it clear to the councils that they must take prompt action to recruit teachers in such schools,” Biswas said.

Purulia, arguably Bengal’s most backward district, has 600 schools with only one teacher. “This shows regular inspections are not held in the schools,” the minister said.

None of the councils managed to compile the school-wise results of an achievement test that Class IV students took about six months ago. The government’s drive to compare results of various schools to find out from their performance how far its education policies had worked fell flat in the absence of the reports.

The council representatives are again likely to face flak from the minister at a meeting on Friday.

The heads of several councils declined comment on their performance. Saidul Haque, the chairman of the Burdwan primary school council, was not ready to accept the minister’s charges. “We are working exactly according to the policies of the government. We are also trying to step up the inspections of schools,” he added.

The councils were once a key instrument of the government in implementing the no-English policy.