Spread of science education in West Bengal

Like previous year this year (2012) also many seats of private engineering and pharmacy colleges will remain vacant. Media, on behalf of the people of West Bengal, will start searching the cause and will reach the conclusion with a fair degree of certainty that the private colleges lack adequate infrastructure, employ low quality faculty and charge exorbitant fees. These are the three causes of apathy of the students.

In the year 2011 several of our faculty members went to different Higher Secondary Schools of Nadia and North 24 Parganas those had science stream in HS.

We have obtained the list of HS schools from the WBCHSE. We have found that

• The number of students is reduced exponentially from district town to  muffasil towns to villages in WB.
• The number of science students are drastically reduced as we move out from the district towns.
• In a gathering we have found that out of 40 students only one student is studying science. We tried to find out the cause of this picture and they said that in schools science subjects are there but no science infrastructure is present. The main cause is that they have to move to District towns to search for a science teacher for private tuition.

Now let me give a statistics:

• Number of candidates appeared for HS Examination in the year 2011: 637, 808
• Number of candidates appeared for Science subjects in the year 2011:
• Number of candidates appeared for WBJEE in the year 2011: 1,20,000
• WBJEE Rank declared for Engineering / Pharmacy streams: 80,000
• WBJEE Rank declared for Medical stream: 2500

In a recent excerpt "Uchha Madhyamik-e kato chhatro 'science' pore, janen?" written by Ashokendu Sengupta [Anandabazar Patrika May15, 2012] several data is provided:

PARTICULARS	NUMBER	PERCENTAGE
Total number of HS schools inWB	4653
HS schools where pure science is taught	1766	38% of all HS schools of the WB
HS School where Biology is taught	1973	42% of all HS schools of the WB
Pure science schools in Cooch behar		15.2% of all HS schools of the district
Pure science schools in Darjeeling		15.7% of all HS schools of the district
Pure science schools in Dakshin Dinajpur		20.7% of all HS schools of the district
Pure science schools in Maldaha		23.3% of all HS schools of the district
Pure science schools in Uttar Dinajpur		13.9% of all HS schools of the district
Number of students studying Physics		10.8% of total students of the district
Number of students studying Biology		14.3% of total students of the district
Number of students studying Science (2009-10 data)		21.0% of total students of WB

So this is the situation of the spread of science education in WB. In Kerala the number of science students is 42.7% of their total HS students. In this situation how can we expect to fill up the seats of pure science, engineering and pharmacy. Architecture and medical seats are few in number therefore they will be filled up.

If the private engineering and pharmacy colleges are to retain good faculty the sixth pay commission has to be instituted. Non-teaching staff members has to be given the latest ROPA. Whether all the seats are filled-up or not the recurrent expenditures has to be born year after year to get the approvals from AICTE, PCI, Universities. With so much expenditure and no help from the government any sane person can guess the fees required to be charged by these institutes. Let me give one comparison, few years ago I have heard some where, probably in some APAI discussion, that expenditure per year per student in Jadavpur University is Rs. 2 lacs. Calculating for four years degree engineering course it will stand out to Rs. 8 lacs whereas the government approved rate of fees in a private college is Rs.3 lacs. in four years. Can anybody expect a comparison between the government and private institutions? Please think over before giving a comment.