Chaos reigns in West Bengal’s 49,379 primary schools which have an aggregate enrollment of 7.22 million children, because of the state government’s failure — despite prior declaration of intent — to introduce English teaching during the current academic year starting this month. The cause of the chaos is simple: there are hardly any teachers to teach English.
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It’s not as though the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM)-led Left Front government, which has been ruling in West Bengal (pop. 80 million) for the past 30 years, didn’t have sufficient notice. Reversal of the ruling Left Front’s policy decision of 1982 to abolish teaching English at the primary school level since teaching a “foreign language” was “elitist”, was announced in November last year. From the new academic year five-year-old children joining class I would be taught English, proclaimed the state government’s school education minister Partha Dey without any apology to the several million citizens who were denied foun-dation English education since 1982 and consequently rendered unemployable.
Even in the present instance Dey had over six months to prepare the new primary curriculum. According to the Statistical Handbook: West Bengal 2005-2006 published by the Bureau of Applied Economics and Statistics, Government of West Bengal (July 2007), there’s already a shortage of 48,868 teachers in the state’s primary schools, leaving few to teach the extra subject.
Clearly, the Left Front government’s policy about-turn on the teaching of English in primary and in an undisclosed number of secondary and higher secondary schools, requires teacher recruitment and training on a massive scale. Paradoxically, even well-reputed Bengali medium schools which have enough teachers are confused by the lack of specific operational directives from the government. “I’m confused because I haven’t heard anything about introducing English in class I from the state government yet,” says Rupak Homray, headmaster of the prestigious Ballygunge Government High School. “Till I do, my hands are tied.”
Most school heads say it’s already too late to introduce English as the new academic year for primary schools commenced on May 9. Most importantly, neither have teachers been recruited nor has their eligibility criteria been announced. Commonsense says English teachers will be different from the run-of-the-mill type currently in employment because only those posses-sing an English-medium education background plus the capacity to speak English fluently, will have to be recruited. Worse still, Dey confirms that for government and government aided schools — excluding well-endowed public schools and minority institutions — teachers will be recruited through the School Service Commission, notorious for its convoluted bureaucratic processes. The whispered view of the proverbial ‘silent majority’ of apolitical parents is that the party, always supreme in the communist ideology, will opt to save face by maintaining the status quo for another year.
This seems likely because the November 2007 announcement to re-introduce English language learning at the start of the current academic year is still being opposed by Marxist die-hards within the Left Front government. The state’s PWD minister Kshiti Goswami, a member of the allied RSP (Revolutionary Socialist Party), is unpersuaded about the rationale of the cabinet decision to re-introduce English learning in primary schools. “It is true that we need to teach students English and prepare them for jobs, particularly in the IT sector, but we have to be careful,” Goswami reportedly argued at a cabinet meeting, adding: “The proposal smacks of double standards. Brilliant students in rural areas won’t get the opportunity to learn English. Before taking any step, the syllabus needs to be reviewed. Discussions are required with teachers, students and educated sections of society.”
Presiding over a recent cabinet meeting, West Bengal’s reportedly reformist chief minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee took the pro-party cue and agreed to ask the ‘teachers’ cell’ — a highly politicised CPI(M) dominated Left Front body — to further discuss the issue. Against this backdrop it isn’t clear whether Dey’s November 2007 announcement was made with cabinet approval. If not, he ought to be reprimanded. If it had, how come the cabinet is debating and reversing its own decision so late?
So will English be taught in the state’s primary schools from the current session, the next session or not at all? In CPM ruled West Bengal where the masses are cannon fodder for squabbling politicians, this is a political rather than academic question.
Sujoy Gupta (Kolkata)