Shikshashree Scheme(SS-WEST BENGAL)

Overview

About SS-WEST BENGAL

Shikshashree is one scheme name carrying two rate cards. The Backward Classes Welfare Department pays the Scheduled Caste half, the Tribal Development Department pays the Scheduled Tribe half, and what a Class V pupil is owed depends on which of the two the family sits under. Both halves stop at Class VIII, both are shut to boarders, and in both the school rather than the parent does the filing. The verbatim scheme record further down this page is the Scheduled Caste half; the Tribal Development Department publishes the Scheduled Tribe half separately.

West Bengal launched Shikshashree in 2014-15 to replace grants it had decided were too small to work. On the Scheduled Caste side it absorbed the Book Grant and the Maintenance Grant; on the Scheduled Tribe side it absorbed three, the Book Grant, the Maintenance Grant and Other Compulsory Charges, and routed the whole amount into the pupil's own bank account instead (Tribal Development Department). The stated aim is narrow enough to take literally: hold Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe children in school through the pre-matric years, and pull down the drop-out rate among girls in particular (Government of West Bengal).

Nothing about it is competitive. The Backward Classes Welfare Department's rate chart records Shikshashree as carrying no quota and paying once in a year, unlike the merit scholarships printed beside it on the same sheet, each capped at a fixed count of awards (Rate of grants under different educational schemes, Backward Classes Welfare Department). The Scheduled Tribe half alone reached 2,17,713 pupils in its first year and 1,81,000 in 2021-22, the last year the Tribal Development Department publishes (Tribal Development Department).

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

Neither department publishes a statewide closing date for Shikshashree, and none is displayed on the portal. What the portal does announce is the opening, and it announces it for both kinds of entry at once: fresh applications and renewals for the 2026-27 session began on 1 June 2026 across all districts (Sikshashree portal). The date that actually binds a family is earlier and local, the day its own school stops taking forms, because a form that misses the school never reaches the portal.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Merit does not enter it. A Shikshashree claim turns on caste certification, a family income ceiling and the day scholar rule, and it is the third that catches families out.

A day scholar lives at home and attends school daily. A child in a school-attached hostel is outside Shikshashree altogether and is picked up by the hostel line instead, which is a better-paying scheme with a far harsher income test: Rs 1,000 a month for 10 months to Scheduled Tribe boarders in more than 1301 school-attached hostels (Tribal Development Department), and Rs 750 a month for 10 months to Scheduled Caste boarders in more than 1522 such hostels, in both cases only where family income stays under Rs 36,000 a year against Shikshashree's Rs 2.5 lakh (Educational schemes, Backward Classes Welfare Department).

The school has to be a government, government-aided or government-recognised school in West Bengal, which is wider than "government school" but still shuts out an unrecognised private one. The income figure is the household's, from every source, and the form asks for it in exactly those words, as annual gross family income (Backward Classes Welfare Department application form).

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Neither department publishes an exclusion list for Shikshashree, so the boundary has to be drawn from who owns the schemes next door. A boarder belongs to the hostel grants. A pupil who reaches Class IX leaves Shikshashree for the centrally sponsored pre-matric scholarship for Classes IX and X, a different scheme on a different portal that pays for 10 months rather than once a year (Bankura district administration). An Other Backward Classes pupil sitting in the same classroom on the same family income is outside Shikshashree and belongs to Medhashree (Government of West Bengal).

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Renewal is neither automatic nor a fresh registration. The award runs on to Class VIII provided the pupil applies again each year and conduct and attendance hold up. What ties one year to the next is a card: the printed application opens with a NEW or RENEWAL box and, beside it, a field for an Entitlement Card number, so a returning pupil is identified by the card the scheme has already issued rather than by a new file (Backward Classes Welfare Department application form). Neither department publishes, anywhere reachable from its own website, who issues that card or when it arrives, so the school that filed the first application is the place to ask for it.

The portal draws no line between the two. Fresh entry and renewal entry for the 2026-27 session both opened on 1 June 2026, for every district at once (Sikshashree portal).

What you get

Award & benefits

Payment is annual. Bankura's district administration records Shikshashree's time coverage as once in a year, against 10 months for the Class IX and X pre-matric scholarship it lists immediately below (Bankura district administration). There is no monthly cycle, and in an ordinary year no arrears to chase.

A family that finds a different Scheduled Caste figure has probably found one of the state's other two. The department's own rate chart still prints the pre-revision slab, Rs 500 for Class V, Rs 650 for Class VI and Rs 700 for Class VII (Rate of grants under different educational schemes, Backward Classes Welfare Department), while Bankura's district page, reporting 2019-20, puts Scheduled Caste pupils in all four classes at Rs 800 (Bankura district administration). The Educational Schemes page cited under the table is the department's current statement of the Scheduled Caste rate. The Scheduled Tribe column has never moved at all: Rs 800 in every class since the scheme began (Tribal Development Department).

Whichever slab applies, the money reaches one place only. Both departments describe the grant as paid through a bank account, and the form repeats it as a standing note at the foot of the page (Backward Classes Welfare Department application form).

• Under this scheme, eligible students shall be provided financial assistance through Bank Account only:
• ClassRate (Per Annum)V₹750/-VI₹750/-VII₹750/-VIII₹800/-2. To improve participation of students in Pre-matric stages and minimize the incidence of drop-out especially in the case of girl students.

What to prepare

Documents required

Two things about the printed form matter more than the certificate list itself.

The income, caste and residential certificate is not something a family fetches from a separate counter. It is a block on the second page of the form, and it may be signed by a Member of Parliament, a Member of a State Legislature, a Municipal Commissioner or Councillor, a Panchayat Prodhan, a member of a Zilla Parishad, a Savapati of a Panchayat Samity, or a government officer. Where the parent is in employment, an income certificate from the employer is sufficient in its place. The form warns the signing authority twice over: that the scholarship is awarded on the strength of that one block, and that the block is not conclusive proof when a caste certificate is later issued by the competent authority.

Photographs are specified down to the count. One passport-size photograph carrying the applicant's own signature, attested, is pasted on the form, and two more go in unattested. Attested copies of everything else accompany the application, and the originals are produced for verification at the moment of submission (Backward Classes Welfare Department application form).

Pupil and parent or guardian then sign a joint declaration that no scholarship has been applied for from any other department, with penal action named as the consequence of a false statement.

Step by step

How to apply

The school, not the family, is the applicant of record. The head of the institution signs a certificate on the form that the pupil's thirteen answers are correct, and the form need not be obtained from a block or project office at all: it can be copied or downloaded from the department's website (Backward Classes Welfare Department application form).

Data entry then happens on the Sikshashree portal, whose login page says plainly who is expected to do it. A user picks a user type from State, District, Sub-division, Block and School level, then a district, a sub-division, a block or municipality and a school, and only then enters a user ID and password (Sikshashree portal). There is no student account on it. Paschim Medinipur's district administration walks through the same sequence and ends where a school clerk would, at the fresh Sikshashree application form on the dashboard (Paschim Medinipur district administration).

Checking where an application has reached. Shikshashree has no status page, and the portal's front door offers a login and nothing else, no student registration and no application lookup (Sikshashree portal). Three things stand in for one. The school holds the signed form and knows whether it has been entered. The Entitlement Card number is the confirmation that the scheme has taken the pupil on (Backward Classes Welfare Department application form). And the credit shows up only in the bank passbook, which makes the project officer cum district welfare officer, whose office the department publishes for every district, the right desk for a payment that never arrived (Backward Classes Welfare Department). A fault with the portal itself, as opposed to a question about money, goes to the helpline the portal prints, 9874955885 (Sikshashree portal).

The contrast is worth knowing, because it is where the wrong advice comes from. The Class IX and X and post-matric schemes are filed on OASIS, which does give the student a login of their own and does carry a Track an application link on its front page (OASIS, Backward Classes Welfare Department). Shikshashree does not work that way, and no amount of hunting on it will produce a tracking screen.

How winners are picked

Selection process

There is no test, no merit list and no cut-off, and no ceiling on numbers either: the department's rate chart records Shikshashree as carrying no quota, while the merit scholarships printed on the same sheet are each capped at a fixed count of awards (Rate of grants under different educational schemes, Backward Classes Welfare Department). A pupil who satisfies caste, class, school type, income and the day scholar rule is entitled. What stands in place of a selection rule is the certificate the head of the institution signs on the form, vouching that the answers are correct (Backward Classes Welfare Department application form).

Fine print

Terms & conditions

Three conditions decide whether the money survives the year. A class is funded once, so a pupil who repeats Class VII draws nothing for the repeat and re-enters the scheme on promotion. Any other scholarship or stipend of a similar character drawn for the same period makes the Shikshashree amount refundable, which is why the form asks separately what was received in the previous year and what else has been applied for. And there is no cash or cheque route: the form's closing note is that payment is made only through a bank account (Backward Classes Welfare Department application form).

Get help

Contact

The Scheduled Caste half is run from the Backward Classes Welfare Department at DJ-4, Sector-II, Administrative Building, 4th Floor, Salt Lake, Kolkata 700 091, on 033 2337 1040, with the Backward Classes Welfare and Tribal Development Directorate at Mitra Building, 8 Lyons Range, 2nd Floor, Kolkata 700 001, on 033 2230-8237. The same page carries the contact details of every project officer cum district welfare officer (Backward Classes Welfare Department). The Scheduled Tribe half is run from the Tribal Development Department at Adivasi Bhawan, Premises No. 2221, Action Area IIIA, Rajarhat Newtown, Kolkata 700160 (Tribal Development Department).

For one child's file, though, neither headquarters is the place to start. The school holds the paper and the district welfare office holds the payment.

Source

Official links

Frequently asked questions

From the official scheme FAQ (myScheme)

Read this

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Scheme details are compiled from myScheme, the Government of India’s official scheme-discovery platform, and are reproduced without alteration. Amounts, deadlines and eligibility change between cycles, so always confirm on the official links above before applying. Expertie does not process applications or charge fees.

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References

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