Siliguri Primary Schools Buck the Trend: Enrollment Booms Despite Pandemic Slump

Over the past few years, the Siliguri educational district's District Primary School Council (DPSC) has been able to sustain a consistent enrollment trend at a time when state-aided primary schools are closing due to student shortages in various north Bengal districts, particularly following the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Siliguri sub-division is covered by the educational district area, and during the pandemic, about 7,000 pupils dropped out of the elementary schools there. However, things have been improving since then, according to DPSC chairman Dilip Kumar Roy.

“Around 6,700 students had dropped out during the pandemic. But if educators work hard, we could get about 60% of them back into the classroom—roughly 4,000 of them. Furthermore, the enrollment trend has remained consistent since the epidemic, which is really positive for us, according to Roy.

In 2019, he claims, there were 26,000 pupils enrolled in 394 elementary schools spread throughout the subdivision, or in four blocks and the Siliguri Municipal Corporation region.

However, he continued, "we have about 42,000 students in the 2022–2023 academic year." "It's encouraging to see the number rising."

In these establishments, 1,706 teachers are assigned.

According to Roy, the majority of dropouts were from tea gardens and slums.

“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.

According to sources, the DPSC has given teachers specific instructions on how to persuade kids to attend class. For instance, a teacher will go to a student's home to find out why they are missing courses if they are absent from class for seven days in a row or longer.

In order to attract pupils, various sporting and cultural events are also hosted in the schools. The source continued, "There are some schools whose children have excelled academically and transferred to well-known high schools in the subdivision.

In the Siliguri subdivision, several primary schools had closed due to a lack of students, as acknowledged by DPSC chairman Roy.

These comprise one school in the Siliguri city area and three schools in the subdivision's rural districts.

"The government has made it quite clear that schools will close if they do not accept new students for three years in a row. The chairman stated, "These three schools have been shuttered because no student has been admitted since the 2019–2020 academic year.

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