Over 35 lakh children out of school, states tell Centre

Around 35 lakh students and counting are currently out of school across the country, data shared by the states so far with the central government shows, indicating the enormity of the challenge lying ahead. While data from a few states came in June this year, an all India picture of the 'out of school' situation is only emerging now as schools open up across the country.

The Union education ministry had launched PRABANDH -- a data portal in June 2021 -- to compile information on children in the 6-14 age group, who may have dropped out of school amid the pandemic. The idea is to bring them back to school and facilitate age appropriate admissions.

Several states are learnt to have sought central government funding under the Samagra Shiksha Scheme to work towards mainstreaming the children who may have had to drop out over the last one year, ever since the pandemic hit India. Bridge courses are already being rolled out to help address the learning gaps that may have risen among these children who are out of school, and to ease their transition to formal schooling again. The ministry has urged all state governments to help track such children through block and village level resources.

In a recent letter to education secretaries of all states and UTs, it had asked for detailed information on all such children to be validated by the district collector or a person authorised by him. Validated data of the identified children who are out of school is to be mapped at the block level and against the closest Special Training Centres to begin the outreach towards mainstreaming such children.

The challenges are two fold -- one is to bring back children to school, especially a whole set that dropped out due to Covid-related constraints -- from relocation of parents, migrant movement, economic distress and even deaths of parents, in many cases. The second is to ease their transition to school by addressing the learning gaps that may have risen due to complete absence from schooling/ lack of digital devices, amid the pandemic.

An assessment by the Education ministry in June threw up a worrying picture, prompting this comprehensive data count. In the data shared by the ministry with the parliamentary standing committee at a June 21 meeting, it was revealed that Uttar Pradesh had identified 5.5 lakh children who are out of school while Jharkhand's count was 6.2 lakh. Rajasthan estimated 1.8 lakh such children as of June 2021 while Assam and Bihar counted 86,094 and 68,256 such children respectively. The overall dropout rate was found to be the highest in Odisha at 22.5. Ladakh was at 18.3 while Nagaland was at 16.5.