Project on Literacy and Primary Education

The IDSK organised a workshop to commission research projects, focusing on literacy and primary education on December 12-13, 2003. Out of 20 proposals presented in the workshop, the Expert Group selected 10. The progress of the project was closely monitored and supervised by a team of experts who advised the researchers as and when required. Subsequently, the IDSK organised two workshops - one on April 19, 2003 and the other on July 26, 2003 in order to interact with the researchers and to assess the progress of their research. The following themes were covered in the research project, all of which were intensive case studies based in West Bengal.

• Qualitative and Quantitative Impact of District Primary Education Programme on the Target Group in 24 Parganas.
• The Status of Primary Education and Literacy Among the Low Income Muslims in Kolkata.
• Dropout From Primary Schools: An Analysis of Causality in Paschim Midnapore.
• Literacy and Primary Education Among the Sericulture Workers in Murshidabad.
• Impact of Caste and Class Divisions on the Dropout Rate in the Rural Schools in Burdwan.
• The Role of the Preraks in the Continuing Education Programme in Howrah.
• Land Reform, Child Labour and Primary Education in North Bengal.
• Continuing Education Programme in the Sunderbans.
• Development, Displacement and Dropouts from Schools: A Study on the Relationship Between Loss of Land and Loss of Education in Paschim Midnapore.

The IDSK has received full-length reports from all the scholars, which are now being scrutinised by a set of experts for the purpose of bringing out a volume on Literacy and Primary Education in West Bengal.

Professor Prabhat Datta and Dr. Dipankar Sinha of the Department of Political Science, Calcutta University, were in charge of the research project.

IDSK has taken up another project on literacy as a follow-up of the earlier research on the subject.