A well-intentioned policy that promised inclusion has instead masked deep learning deficits in West Bengal’s remote tribal communities. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, which took effect in 2010, was a progressive and compassionate piece of legislation that created a framework within which children would be given an opportunity to receive free elementary education.

According to the Act, no child could be expelled or detained for a longer period than the prescribed maximums, as long as they had attended school and received an adequate education. Under the Act, children were not to be held back from advancing through grades based on standards set by the school, but instead were to be able to move through grades at their own pace, without the fear of facing failure. The vision was one founded on hope, but a decade later the realities of the implementation gap between the noble objectives of the act and the realities of its implementation are clear.

The most tragic example of this reality can be seen in the catastrophic consequences for the remote villages of the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups of West Bengal, particularly the Toto people in Alipurduar and Birhor in Purulia. The policy had a clear objective: every child, regardless of ability, would be promoted until Class 8. Although the policy did not state explicitly that promotion would be based on age; this is the reality of the way the policy operates in practice. For example, children who start school late and/or struggle with their academic work are being promoted with their age cohort rather than being held back to complete all the necessary skills before being promoted; the result is that children have not learned what they need to by the end of the academic year.

This is why the ASER (2022) found that only 42.8 per cent of students in Class 5 nation-wide were able to read a Level 2 text while only 25.6 per cent were able to productively complete a simple division problem (ASER Centre 2023). These national averages, while already quite alarming, mask even more disturbing averages in states where tribal populations predominate, where schools have more than one teacher (multi-grade teaching), where students come to school on an irregular basis, and/or where there are language barriers; all of these factors present additional challenges for children from heterogeneous backgrounds.

For example, in Toto and Birhor School, it is common for one teacher to have students from multiple grades in his/her classroom; this phenomenon has been observed throughout ASER’s school observation programme. In addition, the attendance records have demonstrated that students from households dependent on forestry for their livelihood (especially those households that rely on seasonal........

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