Anybody even superficially acquainted with the culture of education in the state will notice the unique and ubiquitous role of private tuition in urban and rural West Bengal. From preparing for kindergarten admission tests through postgraduate studies to IAS examinations, private tutors and tutorial homes form the compulsory core of every student’s life, across the entire social spectrum, to an extent that is seldom seen anywhere else in the country. This has now been established as a fact by the latest Annual Status of Education Report, collaboratively prepared by an NGO and the Central government. When in the rest of the country 24 per cent of those studying up to Class VIII are tutored privately, in West Bengal this number is as high as 88 per cent. From the first stage of primary education until Class VIII, the numbers increase steadily in the state, with the proportion of privately tutored students being 30.6 per cent for Class I and 74 per cent for Class IV. And most significantly, the ASER figures are based wholly on rural surveys. For urban Bengal, reports published by organizations like the Pratichi Trust fill out a very similar picture.

It would be senseless to conclude proudly from these figures that Bengal values ‘learning’ more than any other state, and hence the mad rush for private tuition. The persistent vagueness of the state education minister when asked to respond to this issue (“We are thinking about the matter”) shows that the reality proves to be far more grim and unmanageable. The quality of the government schools in the villages, in terms of teaching as well as infrastructure, forces students to avail themselves of private tuition almost compulsorily, especially when they happen to be first-generation learners in their families. This results in an unbridgeable disparity between those who can afford private tuition and those who cannot. The quality of teaching in class and the extent to which students learn to think and write independently suffer profoundly as well. Yet, the ubiquity of the practice makes it appear as part of the normal course of things, and any real attempt to change the system would require nothing less than revolutionary transformations in every aspect of primary education. Conducting surveys and coming up with anodyne responses or cosmetic proposals are easier for the government than pulling itself up for such a daunting task.