The Bihar Education Department, gripped by profound trepidation, has castigated the woeful attendance plaguing certain educational institutions, vociferously advocating for stringent measures. These measures, as opined by officials, encompass the potential expulsion of students who exhibit a protracted absenteeism of 15 consecutive days without substantial justification.
In a recent epistle disseminated to the cognizant district magistrates, the department’s Additional Chief Secretary, K K Pathak, has proffered an exhortation for the “tracking” of students dually enrolled in private schools while surreptitiously availing themselves of the benefits attendant to the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme earmarked for educational materials and attire.
The lamentable statistics reveal that although there has been a commendable surge in student attendance across the state, an obdurate ten percent of schools languish with an attendance rate that languidly languishes beneath the threshold of 50 percent. This predicament, considered of gravitas, has elicited a directive from the department for the District Education Officers to select and engage with five such recalcitrant institutions within their respective purviews, entreat the parents of the errant students, and implore an amelioration of their attendance. Notably, Bihar hosts a cohort of 75,309 government schools.
Perturbingly, information has been accrued pertaining to certain students domiciled beyond Bihar’s borders, clandestinely enrolled in government schools within the state. For such scholastic vagabonds, their enrolment is now subject to the guillotine of annulment. Furthermore, the department’s prudence in endowing DBT benefits to students, which annually amounts to a staggering sum of Rs 3,000 crore, compels a vigilant inspection into the veracity of students dual-enrolled in government and private institutions, thereby ascertaining the integrity of the system.
Though the rigors of scrutiny have catalyzed the commendable resurgence of teachers and students to most educational citadels, they have also cast a disconcerting light upon the palpable lacunae plaguing the educational infrastructure, most conspicuously the paucity of classrooms and educators. This veritable conundrum, now laid bare, seeks immediate redress.
In summation, the Bihar Education Department, seized by the exigency of this dire situation, has unleashed its clarion call for resolute action, striving to rectify this malaise afflicting the educational fabric of the state.
