Survey soon to identify school dropouts

Sources said the effort will not be limited to merely identifying them, but also to enrol them in the coming academic year after helping them bridge the gap.

After identifying the children who dropout of the education system due to various reasons, they would be given training, lasting between three months and two years, at staterun residential and non-residential centres, said officials. This would help equip them integrate better into the mainstream. 

A special officer from the Education department, who is a member of the survey team, said such special interventions have resulted in great reduction in the number of dropouts in the last six years. 

According to him, qualified non-governmental voluntary organisations would be deployed more in number this year for running residential special training centres for the out-of-school children (OSC) under the Sarva Siksha Abhyan (SSA). The official said that the survey, which would commence in a few days, would obtain information from all the schools regarding the students. 

“This year, we will intensify the survey especially in rural areas to ensure that not even a single child is missed out,” he added. The state government accorded the highest priority to retaining all enrolled children in school, said the official, adding that some students continue dropping out despite all 

these efforts. 

Interventions such as opening more residential and non-residential special training centres and Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidhyalaya (KGBV) residential schools were undertaken to reduce the dropout rate, and to bring them to the mainstream. The retention of children in both primary and upper primary levels has increased considerably, standing at 99.10 per cent for primary and 98.50 per cent for upper primary in 2016-17. 

“It will be 100% soon,” the official said. Quoting the recent National Sample Survey (NSS), the official said as per the findings, the percentage of out-of-school- children in Tamil Nadu is 0.66, which is less than that of Karnataka (1.49%), Andhra Pradesh (0.91%) and Kerala (0.82%) and much less than the national average of 2.97%.