The first set of surveys conducted by the Pratichi research team in 2001-02 involving a number of somewhat arbitrarily chosen schools in six districts of West Bengal yielded enough data for it to arrive at a credible assessment of the key challenges affecting primary school education in these parts as well as possible remedies for the same which culminated in Pratichi’s first Education Report. Seven years later, in 2008-09, the same schools in the same districts were resurveyed to compare and examine the nature of the progress or stagnation in primary education vis-à-vis the earlier picture — and the conclusions constituted this second report.
