The District Primary School Council (DPSC) of the Siliguri educational district has managed to maintain a steady trend of enrollment over the past couple of years at a time when state-aided primary schools are shutting because of paucity of students in different districts of north Bengal, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Dilip Kumar Roy, the DPSC chairman, said that close to 7,000 students had dropped out from the primary schools in the educational district area, which covers the Siliguri sub-division during the pandemic, but since then, things had been looking up.

“Around 6,700 students had dropped out during the pandemic. However, with the efforts of teachers, we could bring around 60 per cent, that is, around 4,000 of them, back to the schools. Also, the trend of enrollment has been steady after the pandemic which is quite encouraging for us,” said Roy.

According to him, in 2019, there were 26,000 students in 394 primary schools located across the subdivision, that is, in the Siliguri Municipal Corporation area and in four blocks.

“But in the 2022-2023 academic year, we have around 42,000 students,” he added. “The growth in numbers is heartening.”

There are 1,706 teachers who are posted in these institutions.

The dropouts, Roy said, were mostly from slums and tea gardens.

“The teachers took up the task to reach out to such students and their parents and managed to bring a considerable number of them back to school,” said Roy.

To encourage students to attend schools, the DPSC has issued certain directions to the teachers, sources said. For example, if a student does not come to school for seven consecutive days or more, a teacher will visit his or her home to check out why the student is not attending classes.

“Also, different cultural and sports events are being held in the schools to draw students. There are a number of schools where students have performed well in academics and have moved to prominent high schools of the sub-division,” the source added.

DPSC chairman Roy admitted that like other districts, some primary schools in the Siliguri subdivision had also closed down in the absence of students.

Among these include three schools in rural areas of the subvision and one school in Siliguri city area.

“There is a clear government directive that schools which do not admit students for three consecutive years will be closed down. These three schools have been
closed as no student has been admitted since the 2019-2020 academic year,” said the chairman.