Seek reports on school dropouts, Calcutta HC to Bengal govt on Covid impact

The bench of acting chief justice TS Sivagnanam and justice Hiranmay Bhattacharyya also directed Bengal commissioner of schools to take steps to sensitise parents of children who have dropped out.

KOLKATA: The Calcutta high court has asked the West Bengal government to call for reports from districts on the strength of students in schools before and after the Covid pandemic and take steps to bring back students who dropped out of schools.

West Bengal was among the dozen-odd states that had secondary school dropout rates higher than the national average of 14.6% in 2022 (File Photo)

In their April 11 order, the bench of acting chief justice TS Sivagnanam and justice Hiranmay Bhattacharyya also directed Bengal commissioner of schools to take steps to sensitise parents of children who have dropped out.

“...necessary steps can be taken to sensitise the parents of those children (who have dropped out) regarding the need for education and steps have to be taken to provide clean atmosphere, good drinking water, mid-day meal etc to bring back the drop out students to school,” the bench said in its order on a petition by lawyer Sayan Banerjee on students dropping out of government schools during the Covid pandemic.

According to government data, West Bengal was among the dozen-odd states that had secondary school dropout rate higher than the national average of 14.6% in 2022. The other states included Gujarat, Bihar and Tripura.

The report said that less than 30% of the students studying in class III were able to read text from a book for class II. The situation was comparatively better in higher classes but still a matter of concern as less than 50% of class V students could read texts from class II and only around 70% of the students studying in class VIII could read text from class II level.

In February this year, there were only 6,98,724 students who were slated to appear for the class 10 exam, down from the 10.9 lakh students who appeared in 2022 and 2021.

“There is a gap of around two-lakh between the number of students who had registered for the board exam and those who were finally going to sit for the exam. There may be pandemic-induced dropouts,” Ramanuj Ganguly, president of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education, had told the media.