Keeping Adolescents in School: A Policy Framework for Siliguri, West Bengal
by Karshna Periwal
1. Introduction
Siliguri is often described as a gateway city and ‘The Chicken Neck of India’, but for many
families on its edges it is also a place where schooling becomes fragile after middle school. In
the tea-estate labour lines of Matigara, Naxalbari, Phansidewa, and nearby settlements,
children face a mix of poverty, seasonal work pressure, distance to secondary schools, and
weak follow-up once attendance starts falling. Many children stay in school through the early
years, then begin to disappear at the secondary transition, which is exactly where West
Bengal's dropout problem is now concentrated. Recent UDISE+ figures show the state's
secondary dropout rate climbing sharply from 6.6% to 23% for boys and 4% to 17.8% for
girls between 2022-23 and 2024-25, even as primary-level dropout has fallen close to zero
over the same period (Ministry of Education, UDISE+ 2023-24; EducationWorld). So the
challenge in Siliguri is not getting children into school, it is keeping adolescents there long
enough to finish Class X.
2. Policy Objectives
This framework has five objectives. First, it seeks to keep children from tea-garden and
migrant-labour households in school through Class X, especially during the move from Class
VIII to IX. Second, it aims to identify out-of-school children early and bring them back
through the legal and programmatic tools already available under the RTE Act and Samagra
Shiksha (RTE Act 2009; IndiaSpend). Third, it aims to improve girls' retention by saturating
eligible students under Kanyashree, while actually tracking its effect on this specific
population rather than assuming it will work automatically because the research on
Kanyashree's impact is genuinely mixed (Das and Sarkhel; Sen and Thamarapani), and this
policy framework wants to treat that honestly. Fourth, it seeks to reduce the distance barrier
by supporting transport and, where needed, seasonal hostel arrangements. Fifth, it aims to
build a simple tracking system so absence is acted on quickly instead of being noticed only
after a child has dropped out.
3. Social Impacts
If the framework works, the benefits extend beyond school attendance. Retaining more
adolescents through Class X improves the chance of later entry into non-farm work,
especially in Siliguri's service, transport, and logistics economy as it has a lot of scope in the
same, being the Chicken Neck of India and connecting the entirety of the Eastern States to
the rest of the Country, though that gain depends on those jobs actually existing locally for a
more-schooled cohort, not on schooling alone. It can also reduce the likelihood of early
marriage among girls, which matters in West Bengal because the state carries the country's
highest recorded rate of marriage before eighteen, with recent official estimates showing a
current annual incidence rate of 6.3% (Registrar General, SRS 2023) and a broader historical
prevalence of 41.6% among women aged 20–24 according to comprehensive national family
health surveys (IIPS and ICF, NFHS-5). There is a broader social gain too…when schooling
is kept alive through adolescence, children are less likely to enter child labour too early or be
pulled into the long-term insecurity that often follows repeated dropout (Basu and Van; Bal
Raksha Bharat). The Bal Raksha Bharat source examines tea gardens in Assam rather than
West Bengal, but its findings are treated as relevant here because Assam's and North Bengal's
tea belts share the same plantation labour structure and seasonal wage cycles, making it areasonable proxy in the absence of Siliguri-specific data. Kanyashree is relevant here because
it gives a direct cash incentive for girls to stay unmarried and in school. But one rigorous
study found no clear effect on secondary completion in its sample, alongside a fall in
classroom and teacher availability (Das and Sarkhel), even as an earlier study found a real,
fairly large positive effect on enrolment among the poorest households (Sen and
Thamarapani). Both are credible; the honest reading is that Kanyashree helps but is not, by
itself, a complete solution.
4. Parameters and Feasibility
The framework is feasible mainly because it relies on instruments that already exist. Section
4 of the RTE Act allows age-appropriate admission with special training for children who
have dropped out or never enrolled, though this provision applies specifically to elementary
education — Classes I–VIII, ages 6–14 — rather than to secondary school (RTE Act 2009,
sec. 4). Retention through Classes IX–X, which is where this framework's core concern lies,
is instead supported by Samagra Shiksha's secondary-education component, which absorbed
the former Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) and funds access, quality, and
retention measures specifically for Classes IX–XII (IndiaSpend). Samagra Shiksha separately
funds bridge courses and out-of-school-child surveys through education volunteers (Ministry
of Education, “Special Training Guidelines”; IndiaSpend) which is a model already running
in other districts (Tribune News Service). Kanyashree is also already in place statewide with
a clear structure for girls aged 13 to 18 (Government of West Bengal, “Kanyashree
Prakalpa”), so the task in Siliguri is not to invent a new scheme but to direct the existing one
toward labour-line settlements where it is under-used. West Bengal's own data narrows the
job further because the state's dropout problem sits almost entirely at the secondary stage, and
because it has one of the lowest shares of schools offering that stage (UDISE+ 2023-24), this
is a distance and transition problem more than a universal access one, which is realistic to fix
block by block. Feasibility does depend on local execution, though. It needs a baseline
survey, a working route back into school, and enough school-side capacity (teachers and
classrooms) to actually absorb children once they return, since funding alone (whether
government or corporate) has a documented history of running behind its own targets in this
sector (Protean; “Unspent CSR Funds”).
5. Stakeholder Analysis
The main actors are the children themselves, their parents or caregivers, school heads,
teachers, Samagra Shiksha functionaries, Kanyashree nodal staff, panchayat members, and
local NGOs or volunteers. Parents matter because many schooling decisions are made under
real cash pressure, not indifference; for a household close to subsistence, a child's plucking-
season earnings can be the difference between meeting a debt or a food obligation (Basu and
Van), so this is not a question of parents not caring about education. School staff matter
because they are the people who notice when attendance starts to slide. Local bodies matter
because they connect the school to the settlement. Estate managements also matter, because
they shape access, work expectations, and the wider environment children study in
(“Livelihood Realism”). The policy only works if these actors are treated as one local system
rather than as separate silos.
6. Stakeholder Mapping
Primary stakeholders are the direct beneficiaries: children in tea-garden and migrant-labour
households, especially those moving from Class VIII to IX, along with the school-level
implementers who can identify and support them. Secondary stakeholders are the WestBengal government departments, Samagra Shiksha offices, Kanyashree authorities, civil
society organisations, and local self-government institutions such as the Gorkha Territorial
Administration for hill tea-estate schools, and the panchayat samitis of Matigara, Naxalbari
and Phansidewa, that help translate policy into practice. Key influencers include political
representatives, local media, researchers, and expert bodies that shape public attention and
administrative pressure. Potential opposition may come from estate managements that prefer
children to remain available for work, contractors in distressed or closed gardens, or
households that genuinely depend on a child's earnings for basic survival.
7. Implementation
The implementation plan is block-based and sequential;
Step 1 is a household survey across labour lines and nearby bastis/ villages to identify
children who are out of school or at high risk of dropping out, tagged to a Permanent
Education Number (PEN) under UDISE+ so a child can be tracked even if the family
migrates (UDISE+ 2023-24). Because this involves collecting identifying data on children
from migrant and tea-garden households, the survey should obtain parental or guardian
consent at the point of registration and follow existing student-data privacy safeguards,
particularly if records are later linked to a broader identifier such as an APAAR ID.
Step 2 is to open nearby special training or bridge centres for re-entry, using the RTE and
Samagra Shiksha framework (RTE Act 2009; Ministry of Education, “Special Training
Guidelines”), staffed by education volunteers running a six-month condensed curriculum.
Step 3 is to run a door-to-door Kanyashree enrolment drive so eligible girls are not missed
(Government of West Bengal, “Kanyashree Prakalpa”), while separately tracking what it
actually changes for this cohort.
Step 4 is to arrange shared transport or seasonal hostel support for children who live too far
from a secondary school.
Step 5 is to adapt the school calendar and attendance follow-up around the tea-plucking
season and major local festivals, since that is when absenteeism spikes in this region.
Step 6 is to strengthen staffing in the weakest schools, which matters because West Bengal's
count of single-teacher schools has been rising sharply (Paul).
Step 7 is to create a monthly community dashboard so repeated absence triggers a home visit,
not just a data entry.
8. Challenges and Potential Solutions
The first challenge is economic necessity: some families genuinely rely on a child's seasonal
labour, so strict attendance enforcement without support could deepen hardship rather than
help (Basu and Van). The solution is to pair monitoring with flexible scheduling, transport
support, and cash-linked retention through Kanyashree, so school and household cash needs
are not set directly against each other during the plucking season.
The second challenge is weak school supply, because some nearby schools do not have
enough teachers or facilities (UDISE+ 2023-24; Paul); the response is targeted teacher
redeployment and support for the most fragile schools, since the evidence suggests cash
transfers alone cannot fix a classroom that has no teacher in it.The third challenge is migration, which breaks school records; the solution is portable
tracking through a consistent student ID and block-to-block follow-up, though this depends
on receiving areas running comparably good surveys.
The fourth challenge is funding reliability, because both public Samagra Shiksha money and
corporate CSR funds have a documented pattern of running below their own targets or being
spent in short, one-off bursts (Companies Act 2013; Protean; “Unspent CSR Funds”); the
answer is to use public entitlements as the base layer and treat CSR as a supplement financed
through multi-year commitments, not the other way around.
9. Conclusion
This framework does not ask Siliguri to solve a universal problem with a universal solution.
It asks the city and its surrounding blocks to use the tools they already have, but to point them
where the dropout problem is actually happening: the transition to secondary school, the tea-
estate labour lines, and the migrant settlements that remain easiest for the system to miss. The
policy logic is simple: find children early, re-enter them quickly, reduce the cost of staying in
school, and monitor the gap before it becomes permanent. None of the tools here are new or
untested elsewhere, and none of them, on their own, is guaranteed to work, which is exactly
why the framework leans on several of them together rather than betting on one. Done
consistently, the classroom becomes easier to stay in than to leave.
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