Problems of School Education in Rural Areas of West Bengal

Education is regarded as the light which paves the way of brightness to human life. It is the apprenticeship for life. It helps in the all-round development of a child’s personality and inclusion of healthy attitudes and good values. Thus the aim of education is to bring desirable changes in the behaviors of the learners. Hence, every society endeavors to make its citizens educated in the best possible manner. All over the world , education is regarded as a potential investment for the future. There is an age old proverb on education as, “If you are planning for one year, plant rice: if you are planning for five years , plant a tree and if you are planning for the future ,educate your children.” That means education is always considered as a ladder of development. Among various stages of education, primary education has vital role to play as its the seed of so called tree ‘personality’. Regarding the importance of primary education we can cite the view of J.P.Naik, “ The progress of primary education is an index of the general, social and economic development of the country as a whole.” Thus Elementary Education deserves the highest priority not only on the social justice but also for raising the competence of the average works and initializing national productivity. Now- a-days the world has become ever more complex from economic, social and political context, the formalization of education through schools has become a abiquitors phenomenon. And it is through this formalization that primary or elementary education has not indispensable but, also compulsory for all. India is a democratic country and under its constitution, education has become a concurrent list with sharing of responsibilities between the centre and the states. Management of schooling has been traditionally controlled by the mainstream states and district administration. Since the last two decades a number of education specific support institutions were launched to enhance both the primary and secondary education. Hence, the objective of the study is to find out the problems of school education to solve these problems. The researcher has used the documentary survey method and collected the data mainly from secondary sources. Owing to such initiatives, though India has made significant progress in the field of elementary education but its a matter of regret that, UEE has not been yet achieved. A large number of causes are there behind this failure. Every education system is packed in so many problems, such as social problems, moral problems, population problems, environmental problems, dropout problems, problems of integration etc. Out of other stages of education, elementary education is the most crucial one as its the base of all education system.The study, in particular seeks to review the progress in elementary education especially in rural areas of West Bengal as West Bengal is one of the major cities of the country. The data used in this paper has been collected from the secondary sources. Education is the doorway to the wider world and an exposition on rural infrastructure is incomplete without an assessment of the extent to which we have been able to open this door for the children of rural areas. Different components and progress that have been constituted rural education infrastructure are evaluated for their relative importance in the delivery of effective learning. Educational infrastructure broadly includes teachers, teacher’s guide to the curriculum and syllabus, school buildings including water facilities etc. Thus, this study reveals that there are various problems of elementary education in rural areas of West Bengal which has been deteriorating the standard of education. The most crucial problems are discussed below: