Bengal: CPI-M's student wing to stage protest on Jan 27 over closed state-run schools

Kolkata, Jan 12 Student’s Federation of India (SFI), the students' wing of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), on Saturday decided to stage a massive demonstration on January 27 to protest against the deteriorating school education standards in West Bengal as highlighted in the recent report of the Union government.

“On January 27, SFI will be organising a march to 'Bikash Bhavan' (state school education department) headquarters at Salt Lake on the northern outskirts of Kolkata,” announced SFI's state secretary in West Bengal, Debanjan Dey.

“In the Central report, it has been stated a total 8,000 state-run and state-aided schools in West Bengal have been closed down. There is not a single student in as many as 3,254 such schools. A total of 6,366 such schools have only one teacher. Instead of finding remedies, the state education minister announced the merger of different state-run schools, which means that the number of such schools will decline further.

"So we have decided to organise a march to ‘Bikash Bhavan’ on January 27 to register our protests against these issues,” Dey told mediapersons on Saturday.

Dey also said that of late the state-aided schools have started extra fees since the state government has stopped providing subsidies.

"On one hand, the state government is organising students' week draining out funds and, on the other hand funds are not there for improving school education infrastructure. Crores of rupees are being spent to felicitate celebrities," Dey alleged.

He said that at the end of a march to "Bikash Bhavan" on January 27, an SFI delegation will hand over a draft school education policy to the state education minister.

"At the same time, we will be handing over a symbolic mark-sheet of the state school education department scoring zero out of 10," Dey said.

Source: IANS