Pre-school/non-formal education 

In West Bengal , the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme plays a notable role in imparting non-formal, pre-school education for young children across length and breadth of the state, apart from providing specialized care for mothers. Beginning with only two operational projects and 250 Anganwari Centers (AWC) in 1977, as of September 2003, this programme has grown to foster  about 350 projects and about  52,5000 AWCs. The population covered by ICDS has increased from 2.5 lakh to 5.2 crore during this period.

The Sishu Siksha Karmasuchi (SSK) is another special scheme for providing basic education to children who cannot be part of the  formal primary school system  because of various constraints. The programme envisages  setting up SSK units in any village with twenty or more children in the age-group 5-9 years. Each SSK unit has a nine-member managing committee of which three must be women and all the teachers ('sahayikas') are also women above the age of 35 years. Currently about 8 lakh children are being taught at  more than 11000 SSKs or Child Education Centers, girls accounting for about  50 per cent of total students. [ii] According to a survey report on Primary education in three Bengal districts by the Pratichi Education Trust (set up by Amartya Sen), instruction in SSKs appeared to be more effective than formal schooling, specially for children from less privileged backgrounds. [iii] This survey found an encouraging trend emerging in rural areas : more than 80 per cent of the parents believed that girls should get the same education as boys.

Primary and Elementary and Secondary Education  

In West Bengal Primary schools usually refer to those teaching classes I to IV. According to recent information, there are about 52000 thousand such schools with co-education, but girls' schools number less than 500.There  are only 1700 Junior Basic schools  teaching up to class V. According to some experts, this is one of the reasons behind substantial drop-outs among girl students before completing primary education. Out of about 13000 and 2650 Secondary and Higher Secondary schools , 1780 and 431 are exclusively for girls. [iv]

Literacy and educational standards attained by women (and men) in any society have to be seen in the context of certain important indicators such as enrolment and drop-out ratios. Detailed enrolment ratios pertaining to classes I-V and VI-VIII for all students, SC students and ST students in West Bengal, Orissa, Bihar and Kerala will be found in Appendix table AE 1. In its very comprehensive and path-breaking Report on the Status of Women in West Bengal, the West Bengal Commission for Women has observed that while girls enrolment in the primary stages (including class V) went up from about 41 in 1986 to more than 45 per cent in 1997, in the upper primary level, girls' enrolment declined from 43 per cent  40.5 per cent during the same period. In terms of al-India rank, at the upper  primary stage the state declined to the ninth position in 1997 from the third in 1986."As far as enrolment in the final year of elementary education is concerned, the West Bengal scenario is rather dismal. In the female to male ratio in enrolment in class VIII, there has been a sharp decline from 78.3 per cent in 1973 when the state ranked third in the whole of India for 55.6 per cent in 1993, when it ranked last among the 15 major states."[v] This trend is reflected in the Multi-Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) of 2000, which puts West Bengal's net enrolment ratios for boys and girls in Primary schools (Grade I-V) at 75 and 70 per cent respectively, vis-à-vis the all-India ratios 79 and 73 per cent. MICS figures for net attendance ratios in Primary schools for  West Bengal boys and girls were 73 and 68 per cent respectively , corresponding to 75 and 69  for India as whole.[vi] Table E 7 provides age-specific school attendance ratios in West Bengal, India and Kerala during the mid-1990s.Though these ratios for rural girls in West Bengal are better than those obtaining  in India as a whole,  the almost universal attendance achieved by Kerala is an indication of the gap to be covered by other states including West Bengal.

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