Seven government-run junior high schools in East Midnapore have been shut down after district officials conducted reopening surveys this month and found that attendance rates had plummeted to zero.

Following the reopening of government high schools in November this year, district education officials in East Midnapore had begun gearing up for the reopening of junior-high schools in the near future.

“To our amazement, in nearly 50 such schools, the attendance has dropped by over 80 per cent. We were able to discern this when we compared midday meal statistics over the last 20 months with that of the pre-lockdown period. Parents and their wards have lost interest in collecting even the meals, much less education,” said an official.

As of this week, seven junior high schools have been closed “but not de-recognised”, according to one official, who explained that the “handful” of students remaining in these schools had been temporarily shifted to others. Teachers of these seven schools have been transferred to other institutions.

District inspector of school (secondary) Subhasish Mitra said: “The state government notified closure of schools that had zero attendance. The teachers of these schools have been transferred. Though these schools have been shut, they have not been derecognised.”

Among the closed schools are the Dakshin Daudpur State Plan Junior High School and the Brahmanchowk Junior High School in Contai, both of which have zero students remaining on their rolls. The others include junior high schools in Egra, Nandigram, Moyna, Khejuri and Bhagabanpur.

State education department sources said schools with a roster of less than 10 students were being considered closed for the time being.

“These schools have all been given instructions to increase their intake if they are to reopen,” said a source.

At the Daudpur State Plan School, inaugurated by the Trinamul dispensation in 2012, teacher-in-charge Snehasish Kar said the decline started shortly before the pandemic set in.

“In that year, we still had 30 students. That halved by last year, and went to zero this year,” he said.

“We had taken up campaigning efforts amid the parents after the first unlock, but that is not possible anymore,” he said.

At the nearby Brahmanchowk High School, teacher-in-charge Subhas Bera said his school’s policy of admission tests for high school had “contributed directly” to the outflow of students starting in 2019.

“Covid-19 was the death knell for all of this,” he said, explaining that most students from modest means were opting to join their parents in vocation instead.

The son of Chandrasekhar Das, who is a Daudpur resident in Contai (South) and a farmer by profession, was a student of Class V when schools shut down because of the pandemic-induced lockdown.

As the number of students at Dakshin Daudpur State Plan Junior High School began to plummet during the lockdown, Chandrasekhar got his admitted to a school a few kilometres from their home.

“Over the last 20 months the school saw a drastic drop in students. At the beginning of this year, I was left with no other option but to shift him to a new institution,” Chandrasekhar said.

The matter of students dropping out of several schools has been taken up by panchayat officials in the Contai area, where deputy sabhapati Bikash Bej said on Tuesday that the panchayat's education units had been instructed to undertake awareness campaigns for re-enrolment.

"We will have an idea of the newest numbers in this regard by January," he said.