No student, 6 teachers, crumbling building: West Bengal’s zero-enrolment school problem

DUM DUM, KOLKATA: Swami Vivekananda Vidyapith is more of a statistic than a school. Its classrooms are empty, its playground desolate and its laboratories, storerooms. The government-aided school in Dum Dum, a part of West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district and the Kolkata Metropolitan Area, has had no students since the last three left two years ago but employs 10 teachers.

The mushrooming of private and English-medium schools, decline in school infrastructure and a botched attempt to merge it with another school and transfer teachers have reduced the institution established half a century ago to a data point on the Unified District Information System on Education (UDISE Plus).

According to the latest report of the UDISE Plus, India has 12,954 schools that have zero enrolment but which employ 31,981 teachers.

West Bengal has the dubious distinction of being the state with most such schools – 3,254 schools with zero enrolment – and with most teachers employed in such schools – 14,627, over 45% of the national total.

Madhyamik school

On paper, Swami Vivekananda Vidyapith has Classes 1 to 10, split into two sections – the primary school with Classes 1 to 4 and high school, with Classes 5 to 10. The second is affiliated to the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE), also known as the Madhyamik Board.

Built in the 1950’s, the school was recognised in 1965. By 2015, the high school’s roll-strength had already dwindled to around 50, across all classes. Parents of children in the primary section worried about sending them to an empty school and started pulling them out. The remaining students started leaving until the last three quit in 2023.

The teachers are in a fix. Again, on its records, the school has 10 teachers – three in primary and seven in high school. Six teachers in total still come to it daily – three each in primary and higher sections. The remaining four high school teachers go to other schools as part of an arrangement called “service placement”.

All of the high school’s Group - D staff for sanitation and other support services were similarly redeployed to other schools. The three remaining teachers lock and unlock the school and do the little cleaning required for them to sit through the day.

“I come to school every day, but there are no children to teach. There is no drinking water, the toilets are unusable, and the building floods during rains,” said a teacher posted in the school, requesting anonymity.

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High school links, English medium

Swami Vivekananda Vidyapith is not alone in its struggles in the Dum Dum area. Schools like Shyam Nagar High School, Baburchi Colony School, and Prachobali School also face the same issue, said teachers.

The problem has persisted for years and stems from a mix of issues – poor infrastructure and lack of facilities, competition from private schools, rising demand for English-medium instruction and the hassle of moving to higher levels.

Parents are reluctant to enrol their children in schools with basic issues such as broken toilets, flooded classrooms, and no provision for continuous education up to higher secondary levels, said a teacher. High school seats are in short supply and students from standalone primary schools struggle to get admission because high schools give priority to the students enrolled in the same school’s primary section.

“A standalone primary school doesn’t help parents because after Class 4, they have to look for a high school. Fifty students compete for ten seats in a high school. Parents don’t want to face such uncertainty,” another teacher explained.

Further, the teachers pointed out that the past two decades have seen mushrooming of even government schools in the vicinity, erected with basic requirements as and when there was demand and through a process of decision-making vaguely described as “all political”. It’s part of the reason no one in this story is quoted by name.

Principal's office at the Kolkata school with no students (Image: Careers360)

Even private schools came up. Many schools, both government and private, now offer English-medium instruction at the primary level. “Many parents prefer English-medium schools these days,” said a teacher.

School merger ends in confusion

In 2022, the state government attempted to address the issue by merging schools with low enrolment with others. Swami Vivekananda Vidyapith was ordered to merge with Kishor Bharati School.

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The merger process was botched. As part of the effort to rationalise distribution of teaching staff, teachers were randomly transferred to distant schools, often in other towns like Cooch Behar and Murshidabad. Many teachers saw these transfers as punishment rather than a solution.

While teachers were transferred out, students were sent to the school but had no one to teach them.

The ensuing conflict and resistance led to the merger being reversed in 2024 but left schools like Swami Vivekananda Vidyapith in limbo.

“I have been teaching since 2004. Now, I’m afraid of being transferred to a remote location as a form of punishment. Why should I suffer when I haven’t done anything wrong?” asked a teacher.

Teacher transfer

Ironically, the teachers do want transfers.

Having no students to teach is cause for much frustration and demotivation among them. They demand permanent transfers to nearby schools that have few teachers and where they can contribute meaningfully. The same UDISEPlus report also shows that West Bengal has 6,366 single-teacher schools teaching 2.48 lakh children between them.

“There are ten schools in this area without students. Meanwhile, there are other schools where teachers are needed. The government can easily post us there, especially those of us teaching subjects like mathematics,” said another teacher.

The courts had directed the government to rationalise teacher and staff postings. However, the education department’s response has been chaotic, with no clear strategy to address the surplus of teachers or the lack of students.

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“The postings were not as they should have been. Transferring a teacher to a far off remote place does not make sense when there are demands in the same vicinity or nearby areas,” said another teacher. “So this did not work out.”

Struggle for infrastructure

Getting Swami Vivekananda Vidyapith back on its feet will take effort and on many fronts.

First, the lack of infrastructure is a recurring theme. The school building is at a lower level and gets waterlogged every monsoon. Toilets lack proper drainage for the same reason. There is no facility for clean drinking water.

What facilities the school did have have fallen into despair through years of neglect.

The computer lab is empty with no functioning computers. The chemistry lab has become a storage space for unused equipment; most classrooms are locked or too filthy to use. The few rooms that open are dark and smell dank.

This travesty of school education still insists on formal registration of attendance and teachers spend from their own pockets to make the building fit for a few hours of daily occupation.

“We had to spend from our pocket to fix the electric connection in just one room so that we have a place to sit. The grant that is required for the school’s upkeep is also not coming but we are getting our salaries in time,” shared a high school teacher. Another said, “For two months, I myself cleansed the toilets as all the staff were transferred.”