According to a recent statement in Parliament by the human resource development ministry, the dropout rate for students in West Bengal studying in class I to X is 80 per cent

Nagendranath Mondal can’t be bothered that the world celebrated September 8 as International Literacy Day. September 5 was Teachers’ Day, but that didn’t cheer the headmaster of the Ramchandrapur Ashutosh Primary School in the suburb of Bally in Howrah district either. He is, instead, worried about not being able to provide tables and chairs for his teachers and students.

“It is the lack of basic facilities that really bothers us here,” he says, pointing to the tiny room that passes for a classroom, where students from class I to IV all study together. “The space is too small but we do not have sufficient funds to expand,” he rues.

The roof leaks and the school is often hijacked by political parties for meetings. In the midst of all that, Mondal has to strive to keep his students — most of whom come from poor families — from dropping out of school.

But Mondal’s situation is not unique. Half a decade after the launch of the Central government’s grandiose Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) to eliminate illiteracy and four years after economist Amartya Sen’s non-governmental organisation (NGO) Pratichi Trust made embarrassing revelations about primary education in West Bengal, the state of education continues to be in a shambles in the Left Front-ruled state. Though the SSA sought to educate all students in the 5-14 age group by 2010, West Bengal has been lagging behind in spreading the education net.

According to a handbook of the West Bengal state SSA, almost 39 lakh children have either dropped out of school, or have not taken admission. According to a recent statement in Parliament by the human resource development ministry, the dropout rate for students in West Bengal studying in class I to X is 80 per cent (the state government contests this figure), considerably higher than the national rate of 52 per cent.

The situation is poor in most parts of India — a country where 1.36 crore children, or 40 per cent of the total 3.40 crore, are still out of school. But West Bengal — with Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh — is among the worst offenders. And many believe that one of the main reasons for the abysmal state of affairs is the paucity of teachers. “The pay scale is dismal for SSA teachers. Some teachers are paid as little as Rs 1,000 a month,” says Brendan McCarthaigh, an SSA teacher trainer and head of Students Empowerment Rights and Vision Through Education (SERVE), a Calcutta-based NGO that works in the field of education. Inadequate pay, he argues, leads to dismal standards of teaching.

Under the SSA, the teacher-student ratio should be 1:40. Officially the situation is not all that bad in the state. According to statistics provided by the government of India, the teacher-student ratio is 1:52 in primary schools in West Bengal, 1:36 in the elementary schools and 1:41 in secondary schools.

But as a quick tour of some schools indicates, the situation is alarming. Mohammed Jarjis Ali, a teacher at the Osmania High Madrassa in Malda district, holds that the ratio in his school — and several other schools — is closer to 1:100. “In our institution, we lack both teaching and non-teaching staff,” says Ali.

A poor teacher-student ratio leads to high dropout rates. “If a school does not have enough teachers, students automatically drop out,” says Mondal of the Ramchandrapur Ashutosh Primary School. “It is difficult to get deprived children to study because of deep-rooted stereotypes among parents who dismiss education,” he says.

Lack of funds is a common complaint, but a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) this year shows that West Bengal received Rs 341 crore for SSA, more than double of the Rs 167.48 crore it got in 2003-2004. But the CAG points out that the money has not always been spent on education.

Officials, however, are reluctant to condemn the scheme. “It is true that the SSA has some way to go to ensure total literacy in the state, but to say that it is a complete failure is like throwing the baby out with the bath water,” says a senior official of the community mobilisation and alternative education section of the West Bengal government’s department of school education.

At the ground level, though, the indications are that education is in a mess. Many district schools do not have proper infrastructure and quite a few do not have adequate sitting arrangements for students. Sweltering in the summer heat in a cramped room is quite the norm.

“Our teachers have even donated money to bring electricity to our school since we have not received a government grant (for this),” says Sukumar Ghosh, headmaster of the Durgapur Pallimangal Primary School in Bally.

Teachers are also concerned that students of different classes are taught in the same room simultaneously. “One room for four classes is woefully inadequate for both students and teachers, for it becomes really tough to tackle children of several classes all at once,” says Sadhana Kundu, a teacher at the Durgapur Pallimangal School.

And while the usually-acclaimed mid-day meal scheme — under which students are given a simple meal in school — is meant to increase attendance, lack of space leads to a situation where they are forced to have their meals in the classroom itself. “While the scheme is good per se, there are problems in proper implementation owing to the unavailability of separate rooms for meals,” says Ghosh.

Parents, clearly, are not happy with the quality of education either. The parents of seven-year-old Sulemina Khatun pulled her out of the Osmania Madrassa in Malda. Her mother, Fatima Bibi, felt she was wasting her time in school. “I would rather have her work than recite poetry,” says Fatima.

The bottomline of any educational scheme is to reach children. What do they have to say about the so-called institutions of enlightenment? “I would like to have more books and pencils,” says eight-year-old Sushobhan Sen, a class IV student at the Durgapur Pallimangal School. Sen likes his teachers and enjoys reading Rabindranath Tagore — but there are times when he feels all boxed in. School, for many like him, is almost like a sentence.