For 15 years, over eight lakh students appeared for the higher secondary examination in West Bengal every year. In 2025, that number fell to 4.82 lakh. The children who paid the price were those who had no alternative. In Jangalmahal, private schools barely exist. When government schools stop functioning, children stop studying.
Read the full investigation here: How a ‘Cash-For-Jobs Scam’ Emptied Out Public Schools In West Bengal
In 2016, the West Bengal School Service Commission ran a recruitment drive for over 25,000 teaching and support staff positions in government schools. What followed was not a straightforward hiring exercise but a scandal. When the Calcutta High Court started looking into it, it found that jobs were handed out for bribes, original answer sheets were destroyed, and deserving candidates were bypassed. By 2024, the court had cancelled every single appointment.
This is just context. The story of the scam has been told many times. What hasn’t been told as clearly is what happened to the children in schools that were left without enough teachers.
Our reporter Siddhanta spent days in Jangalmahal in November 2025, and again in March this year. He travelled the forested, Adivasi-dominated belt spread across Bankura, Purulia, and Paschim Medinipur, visiting schools, talking to teachers, students, and families. What he found was a quiet collapse: schools running on two teachers for eight subjects, classrooms locked and abandoned. The government feeder school network, built over decades to bring children from remote villages into higher education, stood hollowed out. The consequence? Children dropping out of barely functioning schools.
The numbers tell part of this story. For 15 years, over eight lakh students appeared for the higher secondary examination in West Bengal every year. In 2025, that number fell to 4.82 lakh. The children who paid the price were those who had no alternative. In Jangalmahal, private schools barely exist. When government schools stop functioning, children stop studying.
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