Education in the Bankura District, West Bengal

Abstract

The present study attempts to trace the spatial distribution of educational facilities as well as the overall status of the educational system in the Bankura district of West Bengal. In this endeavour, three essential parameters are taken into account: the Teacher Institution Ratio (TIR), the Institute Student Ratio (ISR) and the Teacher Student Ratio (TSR). These parameters are applied to each section of primary, secondary and graduate school. Altogether nine parameters are used so as to satisfy the objectives. The actual position of the jth Community Development Block (C.D. Block) in the nine-dimensional Cartesian space may be plotted by the vector (I_1j, I_2j, I_3j, I_4j, I_5j, I_6j, I_7j, I_8j, I_9j). The best situation in terms of educational facilities (EF) can be found in the Cartesian space vector in terms of (1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1). The worst situation is denoted by the vector (0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0). At the end, an Educational Facility Index (EFI) is computed measuring the normalised inverse Euclidean distance of the vector (I_1j, I_2j, I_3j, I_4j, I_5j, I_6j, I_7j, I_8j, I_9j) from the worst condition (0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0). This distance-based approach has an advantage over the UNDP methodology insofar as it measures achievement through a deprivation index. We have also ranked the EFI (after Kendall’s method) so as to identify the position of each C.D. Block within the district. At the end, a cluster analysis (SPSS Software-20) is done following a squared Euclidean distance method. In order to represent the possible clusters of the C.D. Blocks, a dendrogram is drawn following an average linkage method. The data and map were collected from the District Statistical Handbook 2007 and 2012 of Bankura and the 18th All India Livestock Census, Agriculture Implements and Machinery, Fishery Statistics, Bankura, West Bengal, 2007, respectively. The study confirms that the overall condition of regarding educational facilities in terms of EFI is poor in the district of Bankura.