The West Bengal government and the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta on Saturday has said that they have joined hands in order to impart leadership training to 1,300 heads of schools. The beneficiaries would include heads of government and government-aided primary, secondary and higher secondary-level educational institutes, in batches.

“I am glad that the Paschim Banga Samagra Shiksha Mission (PBSSM), under the School Education Department, has identified and taken the lead in focused intervention in education. This is a timely and necessary step in the right direction," said Director of IIM Calcutta, Professot Uttam Kumar Sarkar, while inaugurating the first batch of the programme.

West Bengal Education Minister Bratya Basu said the ‘Leadership Development Programme’ will tap the latent leadership quality of the heads of these institutes, and they will be the agents of change or "the change provocateurs as once stated by famous linguist Noam Chomsky about the role of intellectuals”. The training programme is scheduled to be organised in small batches in December 2021 and January 2022.