The West Bengal government will bring class 5 to primary level from January 2020 to battle teacher-shortage crisis.
Following chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s announcement last week, a meeting of education department officials and minister has decided to set up the required infrastructure in schools, education minister Partha Chatterjee said on Monday.
“Rooms for class 5 are already present in integrated schools (with both primary and secondary sections). For other schools, we have plenty of time for building new rooms. Once the infrastructure is ready, class 5 will be brought at the primary level”, he said.
On January 14, the chief minister had announced that her government is mulling a two-pronged strategy to meet the crisis of teacher shortage in state run schools. The steps are to bring class 5 to primary level, and to recruit graduates as interns in primary and secondary schools.
Asked about recruiting graduates as interns, PTI quoted Chatterjee as saying, “This is not recruitment. Interns are not recruited. We are evaluating the whole situation in different institutions and mulling over the scope to get interns.”