The accusation falls with gavel-weight. As classrooms empty and corridors fall still, a covert, private tuition bazaar allegedly blossoms across 22 districts of West Bengal, run by government and government-aided school teachers—knowledge wrapped for sale in the half-light, instruction traded like contraband, chalk priced and lessons invoiced by after-hours education operators who turn learning into a billable commodity.
The West Bengal Private Tutors’ Welfare Association (WBPTWA) said it had placed before the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE) a district-wise dossier naming more than 5,000 government and government-aided school teachers across 22 districts who, the association alleges, are running a multi-crore private-tuition syndicate in defiance of a standing Calcutta High Court order.
The chalk has genuinely become a currency in a surreptitious economy. With the day’s lesson done, an illicit emporium blooms—chalk traded where trust should stand. With complaints mounting statewide, the association is now urging the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to step in—arguing that the scale, organization, and money flows demand a financial-crime lens, not merely an administrative rap on the knuckles. The Board, they say, must initiate swift inquiries; if it does not, the association vows to return to court and seek contempt for non-enforcement. Their allegation and district tally echo earlier reporting that flagged a planned submission of a 5,000-name list to WBBSE and identified multiple hotspots.
At the moral centre of this confrontation is an unambiguous statutory boundary. Under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, Section 28 states in spare, declarative prose: “No government and government-aided school teachers shall engage himself or herself in private tuition or private teaching activity.” The line is bright; its purpose is plain—to prevent public duty from becoming private commerce, and to ensure that the teacher’s influence in the classroom is not monetized after hours.
West Bengal’s own rulebook, notified in the Kolkata Gazette and incorporated into the Board’s conduct code, sings from the same page. Rule 4(6) is stark: “No government and government-aided school teachers shall engage themselves in any sort of private tuition for personal gain.” The rule also carries a crucial, humane proviso: government and government-aided school teachers must cooperate in remedial coaching organized by the school—a lawful way to help lagging students without turning education into a side business. In other words, extra help belongs inside the institution’s framework, with no fee changing hands.
Armed with files mapped district by district, the association demands a financial-crime lens on what it calls a ‘private coaching-for-cash’ web—a formal Enforcement Directorate (ED) probe that follows the money where ordinary departmental memos cannot. Parallelly, it presses WBBSE to trigger swift, transparent disciplinary proceedings; and it warns that avoidable delay may invite a return to the High Court with a contempt plea should enforcement again drift from decree to dead letter.
This is not merely a quarrel over pedagogy. It is a dispute about law and duty, about conflict of interest and public trust, and about whether the promise of free education by day can be quietly converted into a paid product after dusk.
LESSONS IN THE SHADOWS: INSIDE BENGAL’S ILLEGAL PRIVATE-TUITION RACKET
When the school day ends, another classroom flickers to life—under a bare bulb in a garage or private home, behind an undulating door or in a back-alley room where chalk dust hangs like fog. Across West Bengal, unregulated private-tuition rackets operate from dingy buildings, garages, alleys, and backyards run by government and government-aided school teachers. Here, the receipt is a whisper, the exit is a narrow stair, and the promise is everything—until it isn’t.
Unlike licensed private tutorial centres, these outfits, run by government and government-aided school teachers, answer to no timetable but profit, and no safety code but luck. Fire exits are fantasies, CCTV is absent, and visitor logs are a rumour. Children sit shoulder to shoulder on rickety benches, and wiring droops like vines. In this shadow market, parents purchase hope and receive exposure to unsafe conditions, no grievance redressal, and no accountability.
News reports in recent years have mapped the harms—sexual and physical abuse, intimidation, and squalid infrastructure where the air is stale and the rules are looser than the door hinges. Governments have noticed. From China’s national clampdown on commercial after-school private tutoring to India’s periodic drives, authorities cite the same triad of concerns: child safety, tax evasion, and the widening of educational inequality. The logic is elementary and urgent. If learning becomes a pay-to-play contest run from unlicensed rooms run by government and government-aided school teachers, the poorest children fall farther behind, and the State’s promise of free, fair schooling turns skeletal after sunset.
Follow the money, and the picture sharpens. Investigations by India’s Directorate General of Goods and Services Tax Intelligence (DGGI) have already exposed widespread tax evasion among government-run and government-aided school teacher coaching chains. In the informal underbelly, where cash and QR codes change hands in the shadows, the incentive to conceal only deepens. Some racket market miracle outcomes with misleading shadow advertisements on social media—top-rank guarantees, ‘100% selection,’ ‘direct admission’—baiting anxious parents with false precision. When results fail to bloom, complaints wither in the absence of contracts, receipts, or a registered address.
The law is not silent. Building and fire codes, juvenile protection statutes, consumer-protection norms, and licensing frameworks all demand that a place of teaching be safe, identifiable, and regulated. Where government or government-aided teachers are involved, education-service rules and court orders establish another clear boundary: no fee-based private coaching that exploits the public education system. The principle is not moralism; it is engineering against conflict of interest and predation.
What does credible enforcement look like? First, licensing or closure—no grey area in the middle. Every private teaching class must register, meet fire and occupancy standards, and publish grievance channels. Second, financial transparency—PAN/GST where applicable, receipts by default, and routine audits for tuition operators. Third, child-safeguarding protocols—background checks, CCTV in common areas, adult supervision norms, and mandatory reporting pathways.
Parents, too, can demand the basics: a legal address, emergency exits, teacher IDs, batch size, written fees, and a refund policy in plain language. If any of that feels like negotiation in the dark, it probably is.
Education should be a public light, not a private gamble. A society that tolerates classrooms without exits will eventually learn a harsher lesson: when the bell ceases to protect, the market begins to prey upon them. Shut the back-door academies. License the legitimate. Enforce the rules clearly, fairly, and fast. Let the chalk return to its rightful purpose—drawing the line between promise and exploitation—and let the child sit safely on the bright side of that line.
COURT’S WARNING WITH A TIMELINE
The Calcutta High Court has already spoken in tones that brook little misunderstanding. In May 2023, a Division Bench led by Chief Justice T. S. Sivagnanam directed WBBSE and school authorities to take strict action within three months against teachers who run paid private tuitions, noting that such tuitions by government and government-aided teachers are “not valid.” The Bench went further: if administrators drag their feet, the court said, action will follow against the authorities themselves. That order did not establish a new doctrine; it enforced an existing one and imposed a deadline for compliance.
As if to keep the rule from going soft with disuse, administrative reminders have re-surfaced, too. In 2024, circulars reminded heads of government schools in Kolkata that Section 28 forbids private tuitions—effectively instructing principals to monitor, record, and take action. A rule not invoked is a rule in retreat; the circulars were meant as a form of institutional memory, not mere paperwork.
THE CONFLICT OF INTEREST. THE LAW WAS BUILT TO AVOID
The conflict here is not subtle. When the person who designs the test and grades the paper also sells “the real lesson” after school, fairness goes from being a promise to a guess. A child who cannot afford to pay is left to wonder whether the morning’s class is enough; a parent who cannot afford the fees is left to negotiate in silence. Even in the absence of overt coercion, the implied pressure can be suffocating. A wink, a nudge, a phrase— “join the batch if you want to really score”—can reshape a family’s budget and a child’s confidence.
This is precisely why the RTE Act and the Board’s conduct rules draw their bright lines. They are not statements of morals; they are engineering of influence. They remove the possibility that official power can be converted into private revenue at the point of need.
Report titled “Implications of Private Tuition in West Bengal,” released by the State Council of Educational Research & Training, Ballygunge, had raised concerns on the extent of private tuition taken by school children in West Bengal. The study noted that 74 percent of these children received private tuition. Among other trends it studied, the survey reported that only 11 percent of the children in West Bengal reported that classwork was checked by the teachers. The same study observed that at the national level, about 85 percent of teachers follow the practice of assigning homework to students. This trend is almost identical to that followed in West Bengal (78 percent to 84 percent).
In a recent study conducted by the State Council of Educational Research & Training, West Bengal (SCERT, WBSCERT(WB)), on the factors influencing student achievement and teacher and student attendance, private tuition was analyzed as one of the key aspects. It was found that 71 percent of the children in primary schools and 82-85 percent of the children in rural and urban areas of the State in upper primary levels take the assistance of private tutors.
While citing imbalances in the system, the Pratichi Education Report (2002) quotes a news report published in a leading daily on March 25, 2001, which referred to the DPEP report, stating that 80 percent of school children require private tuition. In an editorial, the same newspaper states that 44 percent of the total cost of education per child is spent on private tuition. Even ministers admitted that degradation in the quality of education forces children to opt for private tuition. This creates significant imbalances among different classes when it comes to acquiring education. The allegation is searing but straightforward: while the law states that the classroom must not spill into a private cash counter, a trade persists after school.
In August 2022, the State’s School Education Department sent notices to approximately 40 schools, naming 200 government and government-aided school teachers allegedly providing private tuition, and asked headmasters to investigate and report. In the same report, ASFHM’s general secretary, Chandan Maity, explained the rationale—reminding the system that Section 28 of the RTE Act sets the legal bottom line. Administrative memory matters: it shows that enforcement is not a new idea in the file.
According to Ministry of Education data, during 2024-25, the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE) recorded 14.71 lakh schools spread across the country, employing more than 10 million teachers. For the first time, the number of school teachers in India has surpassed 10 million, representing a robust 6.7 percent year-on-year increase compared to the 2022-23 period.
The number of students enrolled in government schools stood at 12.1 crore, or 49 percent of all students in the country. A further 2.4 crore pupils (10 percent) were enrolled in government-aided schools. One of the key reasons government schools attract a significant portion of the student population is their large numbers. Of the total number of schools, government schools alone make up nearly two-thirds of the share (68.7 percent), with 10.1 lakh schools delivering primary, upper primary, secondary, and higher secondary education up to the 12th standard.
However, the number of government schools providing higher education, all the way up to 12th standard, is merely 7 percent, or 70,857, while the majority cater to providing primary and secondary level education.
States such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and Meghalaya have a percentage of schools available that exceeds the percentage of students enrolled, implying underutilization of available schools and leading to suboptimal economies of scale.
In states like Punjab, West Bengal, Haryana, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Bihar, and Kerala, the percentage of available schools is significantly lower than the number of enrolled students, indicating a higher student-to-school ratio.
The availability of the right mix of schools at all levels, being a supply variable in the education system, largely influences the demand factor, according to the report. Although a large number of primary schools have been established since the introduction of the RTE, there has not been a commensurate increase in schools at secondary and higher secondary levels.
For example, West Bengal has 79 percent of its schools as primary schools, with 48 percent of students, and only 3.5 percent as secondary schools, whereas in Chandigarh, 45 percent of schools are higher secondary schools and only 6.1 percent are primary schools, according to the report.
WHY THE ED, AND WHY NOW?
The association’s turn to the ED is as strategic as it is symbolic. A disciplinary memo can address an individual’s misconduct, while a financial crime investigation can map out the networks involved. If the allegations of a multi-crore tuition syndicate run by government and government-aided school teachers hold water, the tracks will not be confined to staff rooms and class timetables. They will review bank accounts, UPI ledgers, rent agreements, coaching centre registrations, and beneficial ownership structures that, on paper, may not belong to any serving teacher at all.
The association argues that only a money-trail probe can reveal whether the same hand that marks a student’s paper also profits from the remedial “batch” that evening; whether proxy coaching centres are merely storefronts for a larger enterprise; and whether fee streams correspond suspiciously with exam calendars and subject rosters. If there is organized profiteering off a public obligation, they say, it is not merely a matter for the staff handbook; it is a matter for a financial regulator with the power to trace, freeze, and seize assets.
Framed correctly, an ED inquiry is not a presumption of guilt. It is an audit of flows where the stakes are systemic, and the alleged sums are significant. If the trail runs cold, those named should be cleared without stigma. If it runs hot, the signal will be unmistakable: public duty cannot be packaged and retailed after hours.
WHAT THE ED MUST DO—IF CALLED
If the matter enters the ED’s ledger, the work is data-first:
FOLLOW THE FUNDS: Identify coaching-linked accounts, UPI handles, and cash-to-digital conversion patterns that spike with exams.
MAP CONTROL: Trace beneficial ownership of venues and entities used for coaching; probe proxies where necessary.
CROSS-WALK CALENDARS: Overlay school timetables with coaching rosters to locate subject overlaps and conflict zones.
TEST THE THRESHOLD: Where proceeds trace to prohibited conduct, assess whether attachment or prosecution thresholds are met under applicable statutes.
A precise financial inquiry does not replace the administrative process; it fortifies it.
BELL FOR LEARNING, NOT BILLING
The legal principle is disarmingly simple. The RTE Act draws a bright line around the time and influence of government and government-aided school teachers; the WBBSE code reiterates that line in bolder paint. Within that fence, schools are nudged—indeed expected—to provide remedial coaching for those who need it, without asking parents for cash. Lawful generosity is protected; paid after-hours tuition by the same teacher who marks the morning’s work is not. The reason is not moralistic prudery; it is the prophylactic against conflict of interest. When the evaluator also runs a shop for “real lessons,” fairness is no longer a presumption—it is an uncertainty.
This is why the High Court referred to such paid tuitions as ‘not valid’ and demanded timelines for enforcement. The Bench saw, as courts often do, the hidden hydraulics of power: parents who fear displeasing the teacher; students who learn to believe that the free classroom is only a trailer; and honest teachers who feel quietly penalized for refusing to join the market.
THE DOSSIER: NAMES, DISTRICTS, AND A DEMAND FOR PROCESS
The association says its submission spans Kolkata, North 24 Parganas, Howrah, East & West Midnapore, Hooghly, East Burdwan, Birbhum, Murshidabad, Darjeeling, Alipurduar, Dakshin Dinajpur, Nadia, Bankura, and more—districts where, it claims, the after-hours marketplace is entrenched. Earlier reportage captured the core features of this campaign: a 5,000-name list, a plan to hand it to WBBSE, an appeal for a formal probe, and a warning that the association would approach the High Court if the Board delayed action.
That said, process matters. A list is not a verdict. Each named government and government-aided school teacher is entitled to notice, a chance to be heard, and an impartial inquiry. The Board’s conduct rules provide a ladder of discipline—from show-cause and charge-sheet to a speaking order—so that enforcement is fair and seen to be fair. Those same rules, crucially, recognize school-organized remedial coaching as a legitimate channel for extra help—proof that the law was designed to enable student support, even as it prevents private profiteering.
MODUS OPERANDI—AND ITS COSTS
The association sketches a now-familiar pattern. A student hears in class that “serious coverage” happens after school; attendance in the morning grows thinner in effort and thicker in hints; a fee fixes the gap between confusion and clarity. Parents—especially in first-generation learner homes—call it coercion in polite clothing. Teachers who refuse to run tuitions feel isolated in staff rooms where “everyone does it.” And the school itself begins to live a double life, the day’s lesson serving as a teaser for the night’s premium product.
Even if only a fraction of this is proved, the impact on public trust is measurable. Integrity becomes eccentric; fairness becomes expensive; merit becomes purchasable. No code of conduct can flourish where those are the rules of the real game.
UNDERPAID IS A TRUTH—NOT A LICENSE
There is no point dodging the blunt reply from many government and government-aided school teachers: pay scales, inflation, and non-teaching duties combine to make after-hours work a financial necessity. Much of that is valid. But the solution to hardship cannot be to monetize the same students one is sworn to serve impartially in class. The way forward is through policy—pay revisions, rationalized workloads, better support staff—not through a parallel market that taxes the weakest families the most.
The RTE Act’s Section 28 and the WBBSE’s Rule 4(6) are, in essence, a public covenant: the State will pay for government and government-aided school teachers; the classroom will remain free; and the help needed beyond the bell will be organized by the school, not improvised for a fee.
The charge is stark and straightforward: when the school bell falls silent, a second marketplace opens. According to Hiralal Mandal, President, West Bengal Private Tutors’ Welfare Association, the private tuition marketplace is no cottage industry but a sprawling, multi-crore tuition network allegedly powered by more than 5,000 government and government-aided school teachers across 22 districts—and it is running in direct defiance of a standing order of the Calcutta High Court. With complaints gathered statewide and catalogued district by district, our association plans to turn to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to demand a probe that follows the money, where routine departmental inquiries cannot. We urge the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE) to initiate swift and transparent disciplinary proceedings, warning that any delay could lead to contempt of court.
“This is a story about law and habit, duty and temptation, public trust and private gain. It is also a test of whether rules that exist on paper can be made to breathe in the classrooms and corridors where children learn and futures are formed,” said Mondal.
THE LEGAL LINE THAT SHOULD NOT BLUR
At the heart of the association’s campaign stands a sentence of law that needs no embroidery. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, sets a clear boundary in Section 28: no government or government-aided school teachers shall engage in private tuition or private teaching activities. The purpose is neither punitive nor puritan. It is prophylactic: to protect the neutrality of the classroom, to prevent the evaluator from becoming a vendor, and to ensure that a child’s right to learn does not turn into a parent’s obligation to pay.
West Bengal’s own conduct code for school staff mirrors that boundary. The Board’s rules prohibit private tuition for personal gain, even as they explicitly permit and encourage school-organized remedial coaching for academically weaker students, offered at no additional fees. The logic is elegant and uncompromising: extra help is welcome, but it must be inside the institution’s framework, accountable to the public mission, and free of cash transactions.
When law and policy speak the same language, ambiguity should die at the threshold. Yet the association claims a thriving after-hours ecosystem, organized by the very people who grade by day, Mandal said.
HIGH COURT’S VOICE—AND ITS CLOCK
The Calcutta High Court has already underlined the point. In a recent directive, the court ruled that private tuition run by government-aided teachers is invalid, and it ordered the authorities to take action within a specified timeframe. The order did more than read out the rule; it put a clock on enforcement and signalled that inaction by responsible bodies would have consequences. In plain terms: if the rule is ignored, the guardians of the rule will not be, said Alikendu Bikas Chakraborty, Joint Secretary, West Bengal Private Tutors’ Welfare Association.
“This is why our association’s current push goes beyond moral exhortation. It sits on a legal foundation that is both old and emphatic: paid tuitions by public school teachers violate the statute and the spirit of public education. The debate now is not about clarity; it is about compliance,” said Chakraborty.
“the private tuition marketplace is no cottage industry but a sprawling, multi-crore tuition network allegedly powered by more than 5,000 government and government-aided school teachers across 22 districts—and it is running in direct defiance of a standing order of the Calcutta High Court”
WHAT A CREDIBLE CRACKDOWN COULD LOOK LIKE
If the ED is involved—and the association clearly wants that—the immediate task would be to track money, not rumours. A coherent approach might include:
BANKING & UPI ANALYSIS: Identify coaching-centre accounts and UPI handles allegedly linked to serving teachers; trace patterns of inflows, batch-wise spikes, cross-district transfers, and overlaps with school rosters.
BENEFICIAL OWNERSHIP CHECKS: Where coaching centres are run via proxies, map ownership trees, rent agreements, and licensing to determine who controls the enterprise.
DATA CROSS-WALKS: Overlay financial data with school timetables, exam calendars, and class lists to isolate conflict zones—subjects taught by day by the same person who teaches for a fee by night.
PROCEEDS-OF-CRIME HYPOTHESIS TESTING: Where credible links emerge between prohibited conduct and significant revenue, test whether proceeds meet the thresholds for financial-crime statutes.
IN PARALLEL, THE WBBSE SHOULD RUN THE DISCIPLINARY TRACK WITH EQUAL VIGOR
Cross-District Inquiry Teams to blunt local pressures and ensure impartiality.
Time-bound Notices and speaking orders to show that each case is treated on evidence, not on innuendo.
The point of pairing ED forensics with Board discipline is not to create a circus, but to build a complete response: follow the money and apply the rule.
THE PARENTS’ DILEMMA—AND THE STATE’S OBLIGATION
Most parents do not stand outside the ED’s office or the High Court’s gates. They stand at the school’s entrance at 10 AM, hoping fairness does not require cash. They cannot afford to antagonize a teacher who will judge their child’s work tomorrow. This is precisely where the State must hold the line. The RTE Act did not craft Section 28 to scold teachers; it wrote that sentence to protect families from a pay-to-learn culture embedded inside a public system. The State’s promise is free and fair education, not free in the morning and fee-based at dusk.
NOT A NEW FIRE—BUT A REKINDLED ONE
It bears remembering: this controversy did not erupt yesterday. Media reports over the last few years have tracked the same allegations, the same warnings, and the exact court-imposed timelines. The dossier the association now brandishes is, in their telling, a map of what happens when reminders become rituals and enforcement turns sporadic. As classrooms fall mute, a shadow market awakens—chalk priced, knowledge billed. The precise numbers will be tested in the months ahead, but the core legal claim—no paid tuition by teachers—is a decade-old rule at the heart of the nation’s elementary education law.
DUE PROCESS IS NOT A LUXURY
The association’s numbers are attention-grabbing, and the call for an ED probe is dramatic. But lawful enforcement is a discipline of procedures, not headlines. Every government and government-aided school teacher named is entitled to notice, a chance to respond, and a neutral inquiry. The Board’s framework provides exactly that: preliminary fact-finding; charge sheets where warranted; an inquiry officer; a speaking order with reasons; and a staircase of penalties calibrated to proof—from censure and withholding of increments to removal in the most serious cases.
If the dossiers are robust, due process will surface the facts. If they are brittle, due process will protect the innocent. Either way, the rule of law will be seen doing what it promises to do: discriminate between allegation and evidence.
KEY LEGAL & ADMINISTRATIVE TOUCHSTONES
STATUTORY PROHIBITION: Section 28, RTE Act, 2009— “No teacher shall engage himself or herself in private tuition or private teaching activity.” The national baseline.
STATE CONDUCT RULE: Rule 4(6), WBBSE code (Kolkata Gazette notification)—no private tuition for personal gain; do cooperate in school-organized remedial coaching.
JUDICIAL DIRECTIVE: Calcutta High Court (May 2023)—paid tuitions by government/govt-aided teachers “not valid”; Board and schools to act within three months, with consequences for authorities who fail.
ADMINISTRATIVE REMINDER: The 2024 circulars reminded heads of Section 28 of the ban and instructed them to take action against violations.
CAMPAIGN CONTEXT: An earlier report documented the association’s 5,000-name list across 22 districts and its plan to submit the dossier to WBBSE and seek court recourse if there was inaction.
It is not dishonest to say that many teachers are over-burdened and under-compensated, and that they juggle election duty, census work, and committees beyond the classroom. Nor is it unfair to note that formal remedial programmes are sometimes under-resourced. But the cure cannot be a parallel market built on the same students that a teacher is sworn to serve impartially.
Low pay calls for policy, not permission to sell access. Workload calls for rationalization, not off-book revenue generation. The public school is a compact: the State pays; the teacher teaches; the child learns without fee. Break that compact and you degrade the promise the school makes every morning.
THE ETHICS BEHIND THE LAW
At bottom, this is not about demonizing government and government-aided school teachers or glorifying private tutors; it is about the ethics of influence. A teacher is not merely a subject expert but a public trustee. The law’s no-tuition rule is a guardrail to protect that trust from being sold by the hour. The remedial-within-school allowance acknowledges reality: many students need extra help. But the price of that help must be time and planning, not money. A school that organizes, monitors and celebrates remedial work is one where the poorest child is not left behind, not because her parents paid, but because the institution kept its promise.
Let the school bell call children to knowledge, not to a billing counter or a back-door cashbox. The law has framed the prohibition: the clandestine private coaching market, allegedly involving government-aided teachers, must be shut. The Board, the Enforcement Directorate, and school heads must now enforce it—transparent in method, scrupulous in due process, and swift.
Until then, the allegation will continue to echo after hours: when the bell falls silent, does a market awaken? The answer, in a lawful republic, must be no—not by habit, and certainly not by profit.
