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informed a press conference in Kol- to 40 at present, with student enrol- stay orders. With recruitment frozen,
kata on June 21. ment in higher education rising from the teacher-pupil ratio in government
During its first term in office the 1.34 million in 2010-11 to 2.03 million schools has risen to 1:59 against the
TMC government was focused on in 2020-21. 1:35 prescribed by the RTE Act, 2009,
cleaning up the mess left behind by This time around in her third term exacerbating the already poor quality
the CPM (Communist Party of India- as chief minister, Banerjee is reported education dispensed.
Marxist)-led Left Front government to be determined to resolve the prob- Unsurprisingly, teacher unrest
which uninterruptedly ruled West lem of filling teacher vacancies in and agitations including a 14-day
Bengal for a record 34 years (1977- government schools which defied her primary teachers’ pay hike strike in
2011), de-industrialised the state efforts in the second term. Soon after August 2019 which ended after the
and massively infiltrated education the TMC government was returned government conceded a grade pay
institutions. But in her second-term to power for its second term in 2016, increase, and a 50,000 para-teachers’
(2016-21), Banerjee paid considerable Banerjee promised to recruit 75,000 (part-time classroom assistants) mass
attention to ensure regular attendance teachers agitation in September 2019, were re-
of teachers in the state’s 92,000 gov- But the Teacher Eligibility Test current in Banerjee’s first two terms
ernment schools, opposed the no-de- (TET), which is the basis for recruit- in office.
tention provision of the Right of Chil- ing teachers for government schools, Against this backdrop, Banerjee’s
dren to Free & Compulsory Education was conducted only twice — instead back-to-back announcements im-
(RTE) Act, 2009, and reversed the of annually — during the past ten mediately after assuming office for
disastrous Left Front government’s years. On both occasions, appoint- a third term, which include setting
decision on compulsory Bengali me- ments were stalled because of wide- up English-medium schools in every
dium of instruction in classes I-VII spread allegations of test paper leak- district and appointing over 32,000
by inaugurating 100 English-medium ages, TMC members being favoured, teachers in upper primary and pri-
government primaries in 19 districts tampered merit lists and appointment mary schools forthwith, are being in-
of the state. irregularities. As a result, more than terpreted as a sign of determination
Moreover during her past two 20 writ petitions challenging the ap- to place the state’s derailed school
terms, the number of universities in pointments process are pending in the education system back on track asap.
the state has increased from 12 in 2011 Calcutta high court which has issued Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)

JULY 2021 EDUCATIONWORLD 23