Kolkata: State Education minister Partha Chatterjee on Monday said that the dropout rates of students in various government-sponsored schools have gone down in the last one year.
In reply to a question raised by Congress MLA Asit Mitra, Chatterjee said in the Assembly that the school dropout rate has gone down significantly. The minister also announced that the student-teacher ratio would be rationalised soon for the betterment of overall education in school level.
The dropout rate in the primary level stood at 3.85 percent in the academic year 2016-2017 and the figure has decreased to 2.12 percent in 2017-18. In upper primary, the figure has reached 0.17 percent from 7.5 percent in the previous academic year.
In case of Madhyamik, the dropout rate in 2016-17 was 26.32 percent, while in 2017-18, the figure stood at 14.64 percent. There is no exception in the Higher Secondary level as well, as the dropout figure has gone down significantly to 11.04 percent in 2017-18, while in the previous year the figure stood at 21.52 percent.
Chatterjee also admitted that in some places there was a mismatch in the student-teacher ratio. There is, however, no dearth of teachers and it is only the distribution of teachers in schools which is not up to the mark, he maintained.
"The Education department has already prepared a report, on the basis of which rationalisation of teacher-student ratio would be done. There are some schools where the number of teachers is low compared to that of the students, while in some others the number of students is low compared to that of the teachers," Chatterjee said in the Assembly.
The rationalisation process for making the teacher-student ratio ideal has already been started and it would be completed within the next 2-3 months, the minister told the House.
According to sources, the state government will standardise the teacher-student ratio at 1:20 in the primary level.
The Education minister also urged the Opposition parties to discuss with the government, if they have any issue with the recruitment process of the teachers. Some of the Opposition parties were delaying the whole process of teachers' recruitment by filing cases, alleged the minister.