The Trinamool Congress(TMC) administration in West Bengal is trying their best to project the good work done by their administration to combat the BJP ahead of the Assembly elections next year.
The latest Annual State of Education Report (ASER) 2020 showed that West Bengal holds the first position for a decline in the drop out rate during the period 2018 to 2020. The drop-out rate dropped from 3.3% to 1.5% in the last two years.
At the national level, the drop-out rate went up from 4% to 5.5 % during the last two years while the drop-out rate in some bigger states like Karnataka stood at 11.3%, Telangana at 14% and Rajasthan at 14.9%.
In terms of textbooks provided, West Bengal stood first in terms of textbooks provided to students, with 99.7% coverage. In bigger states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Andhra, Maharashtra, the same stands at 79.6%, 60.4%, 95%, 34.6%, and 80.8%, respectively.
The COVID-19 pandemic has given way for months of online classes and digital education is the new way forward, at least for now. West Bengal’s contribution has been acknowledged in that area too.
The survey was conducted by an NGO named Pratham. For the last 15 years, the NGO has been conducting the ASER survey, which is a nationwide project to map rural education and learning outcomes in terms of reading and arithmetic skills across the country.
The survey was conducted through phone calls made to parents and teachers amongst others in state-run schools. This was done in the last ten days of September before the lockdown was completely lifted in the country.
