Pratichi Trust (India) was established a decade ago, along with its sister across the border, Pratichi Trust (Bangladesh) [1]. The Bangladesh centre has been concentrating on the social progress of girls and young women there (it has worked particularly on supporting and training young women journalists reporting from rural Bangladesh), whereas here in India, the work of the Trust has been mainly focused on advancing primary education and elementary health care, along with a few other selected activities (such as providing disaster relief).

Even though Pratichi Trust (India) has a programme of establishing new schools (the Pratichi School in Orissa is already functioning actively and well), our main work in the field of education has been to examine, assess and scrutinize the schooling system in operation in the east of India, beginning with West Bengal and a part of Jharkhand. We have surveyed a number of schools across the region, and even though the overall picture cannot be called, in any rigorous sense, representative of the region, there is enough information in these studies to arrive at some general judgments about successes and failures, and, most importantly for us, to form an understanding of the principal problems that face primary school education in this region and how they can be addressed in order to attempt remedying the adversities [2].

Empirical Surveys and Repeats

Our first set of surveys of randomly selected primary schools from six districts of West Bengal were done for the year 2001-02 [3]. Recently we have resurveyed the same schools in the same districts to check how — and whether — things are moving forward, and where they stand seven years later in 2008-09. This report presents our latest findings, along with a comparative assessment of the situation today compared with what we had observed seven years earlier.

The first set of studies led us to offer recommendations about necessary changes for the enhancement of primary education in the region. The action plans were based, among other issues, on the following diagnoses:

— the critical need for working together with the teachers’ unions to advance the role and effectiveness of school teachers (including the reduction of teacher absenteeism and helping teachers to pay special attention to children from disadvantaged families);

— the importance of regular and constructive use of parent-teacher committees (particularly to increase communication of teachers with parents from economically and socially disadvantaged families);

— the necessity of serving cooked midday meals both for advancing elementary education and for improving child nutrition (the reasons for the often-neglected complementarity of child nourishment and elementary education were investigated in our earlier reports);

— the need to reverse the decay of the inspection system for schools (which is severely underused and sometimes almost entirely defunct);

— the importance of providing more educational facilities in some schools and particularly in the Sishu Shiksha Kendras (SSKs) and making sure of prompt payment of salaries and making other administrative improvements;

— the need for discouraging the growing dependence of school children on private tuition to supplement educational arrangements in the schools (various means of achieving this were suggested).

Cooperative Efforts and Collaborative Understanding

A number of our recommendations — though not all — have in fact been carried out in the intervening period, and we are grateful for the attention that our work and assessments have received from the government, from the media, and from the general public.

While some of our recommendations broke fresh ground, others provided reasoned support for independently developed — but new — efforts by the state and Central governments in these fields (for example, the provision of cooked midday meals and the use of parent-teacher meetings). Our approach has been one of collaboration with, as well as mutual critique of, the work of different agencies dedicated to the improvement of school education, including Central and state governments and teachers’ unions, and we have been rewarded by the engagement and cooperation of all the parties involved [4].

Since we have been privileged to work together with the primary teachers’ unions (in particular with ABPTA and WBPTA), we have had the benefit also of exchanging our views and analyses with the union leadership in pursuit of a fuller understanding of the problems and prospects of primary education in this state. The Pratichi Trust has held several joint meetings with the unions in which large numbers of primary school teachers have actively participated. Our understanding of the problems has greatly benefited from the cooperation of teachers’ unions, and they in turn have done a great deal to help implement a number of our recommendations.

We have also held every year a fairly large meeting of teachers, parents, educational activists and experts. These meetings have generated a number of important suggestions for improving school education in West Bengal, on which we have drawn for further enquiry. We are particularly grateful to the parents and teachers who have joined us, often involving considerable travel, in these regular meetings to present their own analyses and to enrich our understanding of the problems involved.

Curricular Overload

The regular meetings we have had with the different parties (including parents, teachers, unions, government servants, and NGOs working in similar or related areas) have also helped us to pay special attention to critically important features in the ongoing schooling arrangements that need re-examination and reform, and to supplement the findings of our own surveys and investigation. For example, one of the important issues taken up more fully in this report deals with the content of the official curriculum, and the heavy load that very young children have to bear in pursuit of elementary education. The official demands typically require — and insist on — home-based study of children after school hours, often in excessive and unreasonable ways (particularly unreasonable for families in which the parents have not, in their own childhood, had the benefit of going to school themselves). As is discussed in the report, the apparently unshakable dependence on private tuition of primary school children has a strong connection with the unrealism of the overloaded curricular content.

Class Disadvantages Imperfectly Captured by Caste Analysis

A second issue that has repeatedly emerged in our discussions is the importance of recognizing the class barriers that divide the school-age population. Problems of first-time school education are enormously larger than those faced by children from families with an educated background, at various levels. Also, lack of economic resources as well as low social standing in established stratification can make it much harder for children from disadvantaged groups to get the facilities and the attention they need for successful pursuit of their studies.

Class divisions have a clear connection with caste distinctions but actually go much beyond what is caught in conventional caste-based categorization. It is of course right that Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) are seen as being, in general, disadvantaged, with very few exceptions (the exceptions come mainly from particular SC groups and hardly any from STs). However, to that has to be added the category of the Muslim poor, which — for historical reasons — is substantially larger as a proportion of all Muslims in West Bengal than in many other states (for example in Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh). So, even though Muslims as a category cannot be seen as being a disadvantaged group (indeed a lack of adequate class analysis has been responsible for some very misleading recent statements on the subject), a very large proportion of Muslims in West Bengal do indeed fall in the category of being economically and socially disadvantaged in terms of their class background.

Any detailed investigation of the empirical situation brings out the need to go well beyond the SC-ST characterization of social disadvantage to taking note of the historically conditioned economic and social disadvantages from which most Muslim families as well as SC and ST populations historically suffer in this region. These disadvantages make children from those families particularly in need of greater attention and support. Even in interpreting the findings of our surveys, the broader issue of class disadvantage has to be kept firmly in view, as we have tried to do in arriving at our conclusions and recommendations.

Repeat Surveys and Our Findings

The recent resurveys give us an opportunity (i) to assess the present state of affairs in primary schooling in West Bengal, (ii) to see whether there have been advances or not, and what remains to be done, and (iii) to examine the effectiveness of the reforms that have been carried out and the changes that have occurred. It gives us particular pleasure to share our findings with the public as well as the media and the authorities responsible for schooling, including the government as well as the teachers’ unions.

Significant Improvements

The main findings in terms of the comparative picture between 2001-02 and 2008-09 are: (1) there have been significant improvements in the performance as well as coverage of primary education in West Bengal over these seven years, and (2) there still remain defects and infelicities that must be overcome.

There is certainly no case for despondence, and it is particularly important to recognize this fact both because despondence can lead to despair and resignation, and because there are good reasons to see, on the basis of the empirical data, that reasoned efforts, when properly executed, do lead to the achievements at which the efforts cogently aim. However, there is no room for smugness either. Things have moved considerably forward (often related to the reforms that have been carried out by the governments involved, and the cooperation of the unions, which have often substantially supplemented official efforts). However, much more needs to be done.

To note the improvements first, there is not only a higher rate of student enrolment, but also a significantly larger average attendance of enrolled students (75 per cent both for primary schools and SSKs — up from 58 and 64 per cent respectively).

Second, even though the problem of absentee teachers remains, there is in fact a noticeable fall in the percentage of absentee teachers on the randomly chosen day of our visit (14 per cent in primary schools, down from 20 per cent, and 8 per cent in SSKs, down from 15 per cent). There is also some increase in the number of teachers per school.

Third, the level of parent satisfaction with the performance of teachers has also gone up (from 52 per cent to 64 per cent for primary schools and from 70 per cent to 75 per cent for SSKs), even though it is still far from perfect. Parents’ satisfaction with the progress of children is up significantly (from 42 per cent to 71 per cent for primary schools, and from 49 per cent to 73 per cent for SSKs).

Fourth, we were really depressed with the 2001-02 results of independent testing of students’ achievements, for example, the fact that 30 per cent of the students in classes III and IV could not even write their own names. There has been considerable improvement in this area, and the proportion of students who could not write their names is now down from 30 per cent to just 5 per cent (that proportion should of course be zero per cent, but it would be silly not to see the progress that is observed).

Fifth, midday meals are now being served in most primary schools and SSKs, and there are clear indications of the benefits of that initiative both in educational and nutritional terms. Indeed, even the increased attendance of students in schools partly reflects the attraction of the school meals, even though the efforts of the teachers’ unions, particularly in reducing teacher absenteeism, has also greatly helped, in many regions.

Sixth, parent-teacher meetings are now much more in use, mostly in the form of mother-teacher committees, even though we still have specific suggestions for improving their reach.

Things that Remain to be Done

Significant as the progress has been, there are still big gaps to meet. Even in those fields, already mentioned, in which there have been significant advance, the absolute numbers of the performance indicators bring out the fact that there is still quite a distance to go for the primary school system to be considered really satisfactory. While some reforms have been carried out, for example, in having arrangements for midday meals (even though they can be — and must be — further extended), in other areas (such as, having a functioning inspection system and remedying the dependence on private tuition), the achievements have been very little, if any at all. The need for going further forward is strong and urgent.

To be concluded

Notes

1. Pratichi Trust (Bangladesh) has been working under the leadership of Professor Rehman Sobhan, with help from others sharing our objectives, particularly BRAC, led by Fazle Hasan Abed. Both the Trusts were set up with the help of the Nobel money that came my way in December 1998.

2. The research work, including empirical investigation and analysis, for this project has been very ably led by Kumar Rana, the Project Director, who has also largely authored this report. His initiative and stewardship have been important at every stage of this work.

3. The 2001-02 surveys were conducted in two instalments, beginning first with Birbhum, Puruliya and West Medinipur, and going on later to cover Barddhaman, Murshidabad and Darjeeling in the second instalment. The findings from the first instalment were published in The Pratichi Education Report I, (2002), and the combined results of the two sets of surveys were included in a Bengali publication, Pratichi Siksha Pratibedan (2004). In the comparisons presented in this report with the later 2008-09 surveys, the two instalments of the first round of surveys in 2001-02 have been aggregated together.

4. I should particularly mention here the exemplary cooperation we have received from the District Primary School Council of Birbhum, led by Gautam Ghosh, who has also given us valuable advice on the analysis of our findings and recommendations.