How 'Lady Kim Jong' is forcing Bengal's private teacher training colleges to fall in line

Embarrassed by a notification issued in Assam, the Baba Saheb Ambedkar Education University (BSAEU) cancelled affiliation of 253 private colleges for breaching regulations

- Pritha Roy Choudhury

Soma Bandopadhyay was embarrassed. In July 2023, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma directed state officials to verify the authenticity of BEd and D.El.ED certificates awarded by West Bengal universities to teachers recruited in the government schools of Assam. As vice-chancellor of the Baba Saheb Ambedkar Education University (BSAEU), Bandopadhyay could not let this slide.

For nearly two years, she had been noticing problems in a large section of private teacher training colleges formerly affiliated to the Burdwan University and later shifted to the BSAEU. Included in a multitude of violations was failure to follow fire-safety regulations, not maintaining the mandated pupil-teacher ratio, and not paying their own teachers proper salaries. A series of letters and directives had fallen on deaf ears. West Bengal’s own minister of state for school education, Satyajit Barman, wrote to Bandyopadhyay in September complaining of colleges operating illegally without proper infrastructure and in violation of rules set by the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE). The NCTE is the apex regulatory body for teacher training in the country.

Bandopadhyaya was mortified. “Another state saying colleges in West Bengal cannot be trusted, I don’t know, if anyone can shrug such a notice off but I, being a Bengali and vice chancellor of the teacher’s education university, could not take it,” he said, adding: “This is my state, it was my fault to stop it. As long as I am in the Chair, I will not allow this to happen.”