Background: –

The information has been obtained from the minutes of the meetings of the Project Approval Board (PAB) under the Ministry of Education on the ‘Samagra Shiksha‘ programme for 2022-23.

Key Data Points: –

1. West Bengal, Gujarat, Bihar, and Tripura are among the states where the school dropout rate at the secondary level was higher than the national average of 14.6 per cent.
2. Government wants to achieve a 100 per cent Gross Enrolment Rate (GER) at the school level by 2030 as targeted in the new National Education Policy and considers dropout as a hindrance.
3. Dropout rate in 2020-21 at the secondary level in Bihar was 21.4 per cent, Gujarat 23.3 per cent, Madhya Pradesh 23.8 per cent, Odisha 16.04 per cent, Jharkhand 16.6 per cent, Tripura 26 per cent and Karnataka recorded 16.6 per cent.
4. The dropout rate at the secondary level in Andhra Pradesh was 37.6 per cent in 2019-20, which came down to 8.7 per cent in 2020-21.
5. United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) states that 33 per cent of girls drop out of school due to domestic work and 25 per cent due to marriage.

According to UNICEF, it was also found in many places that after leaving school, children began working as labourers with their families or cleaning people’s houses.

At gram panchayat and ward level, ‘mapping’ of children outside the purview of school education should be done. Teacher-parent level meetings should be organized at least once a month in schools to spread awareness on this important issue.

Dropout students should be identified and communicated with by visiting their homes as sometimes not good exam results or the family situation is also the reason behind their leaving the schools, he noted.