Abstract

Education is a very important factor of human resource development and management. After a long period of independence, our nation is yet to achieve desired level of education. This is  worst in tribal societies. Tribes are the primeval communities that constitute a considerable proportion of national population. Each of the tribal communities has its own cultural identity. But in general they are very poor. Educational backwardness lies at the root of their economic, social and political backwardness. The District of Paschim Medinipur is situated at the Western margin of West Bengal and a vast area of this district is mostly inhabited by tribes, especially the Santhal Community. The present paper seeks to assess the status of educational attainment of tribal students. The study was conducted in some tribal dominated schools of Paschim Medinipur District with the help of questionnaire survey and secondary data collected from the schools and Secondary Education Department, Government of West Bengal. The study identifies some reasons behind the poor level of academic achievement among the tribal students. It has been found that, most of the schools are disadvantaged because they have very poor infrastructural facilities. The schools have very poor student-teacher ratio and classroom-pupils ratio. Most of them have no library rooms and well maintained playgrounds. Moreover, toilets and lavatories are poorly maintained. The schools have very large feeder areas. Therefore, students are to move a large distance to reach their schools. In most of the Gram Panchayat areas there are very few numbers of higher schools in comparison to the number of lower and primary schools. That is one of the reasons why the rate of drop out is found to be very high for the tribal students. Though the students are very obedient, diligent, physically sound and have many good habits, they perform very poor in academics. 

Key words: Tribes, education, success, dropout, enrollment, feeder area, Lorenz Curve, educational status, educational profile, educational infrastructure, Santhal, West Bengal, Jungle mahal.