West Bengal government takes initiative to bring students back to school

West Bengal government has taken an innovative initiative to bring back dropouts from six to 10 years of age back to the education system, who have missed regular school in the last two years during Covid pandemic.
“The initiative named as "Parae Sikshaloy" (Neighbourhood School) will start from February 7 this year with state’s primary school students taking under its umbrella more than 50,000 schools in both urban and rural schools,” State Education Minister Bratya Basu said.

“More than 60 lakh students will come under the scheme. As the schools are closed officially due to the pandemic, the new initiative will bring the students from every neighbourhood, both urban and rural, under a teacher and that a particular teacher can choose an open ground, field or community hall or any other open space to teach the students maintaining all Covid protocols,” Basu said.

The process of imparting education in state government run schools were largely hampered as the schools were largely closed for primary education from 2020, post-break out of the first wave of the pandemic. While the state government started imparting education through online mode and Mamata Banerjee government provided TAB and smart phones to the students of the secondary and higher secondary-level students, the younger students remained deprived of education.

“Many students remained out of the ambit of education for long as they could not go to the schools to learn. Thus, the number of dropouts increased with many getting engaged into work as child labours,” sources said.

When asked about reopening of schools, Basu said, “West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is reviewing the situation at regular intervals. She will decide on the matter of reopening the schools at the proper time.”

It is pertinent to mention, with urban schools venturing online classes in the wake of COVID 19 pandemic, some teachers from West Bengal government-run school had taken up an innovative initiative of teaching the children students of tribal, rural and backward regions, who hardly afford a smartphone or internet, after Unlock-1 started in June 2020.

The classes were taken by the government school teachers under open sky, community halls of the villages, temple premises and even under the trees. Lovingly called by the locals 'Lockdown schools', these open classes started in June, 2020 and were done maintaining social distance, using hand sanitizers, soap and water. Open fields and community halls are chosen to make social distancing possible as there was a huge spurt in number of COVID 19 cases in the state.