Urban News

The Hindu 06.04.2010

Out-of-school: survey to identify children under way

Staff Reporter

TOTAL COVERAGE:Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan staff counselling the mother of a school drop-out in front of panchayat school at Iraniyam near Madurai on Monday.

MADURAI: Hundreds of block resource teacher educators, block resource centre supervisor, education volunteers and anganwadi workers fanned out across the district, even to remote corners, on Monday to identify ‘out-of-school' children. The survey will also cover migrant workers.

The survey, which will end on April 14, is being undertaken by the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA)-Tamil Nadu, to gear up for implementing the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 that makes elementary education an entitlement for children in the of 6 to 14. The Act, which came into force on April 1, makes it binding on the part of the State governments and local bodies to ensure that all children attended school.

Comprehensive survey

According to K. Sridevi, Additional Chief Educational Officer, SSA, the survey will form the primary database to implement the Act.

It would be comprehensive and ensure that no child was left out of the survey.

Intervention programmes would be implemented as per budget allocations. The survey would also cover Corporation areas, Ms. Sridevi said.

Enumerators in the field told The Hindu that around 310 ‘out-of-school' children were found on day one of the survey.

The teachers in the primary school of the respective habitation would counsel their parents to send their wards back to school.

The teachers would be aided by a Village Education Committee, which would be headed by the panchayat president. Children, thus identified, would be admitted to schools and some of them would be identified for special measures that could last between three months to one year to help them cope up.

Residential facilities would also be offered. The entire cost of the programme would be borne by the SSA. Once the survey was completed, all the children identified would be enrolled into schools.

They would be photographed and the data uploaded into a computer network to prevent duplication.

The SSA officials would also follow up the progress periodically, sources said.

The Hindu 06.04.2010

Door-to-door survey to start this week

Aloysius Xavier Lopez

CHENNAI: A door-to-door survey of school dropouts and those children who are out of school will start this week in Chennai.

According to officials of the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, over 250 slum habitations in the city would be the focus of the survey. Apart from that, students who had dropped out of over 750 schools, including Corporation schools, Adi Dravida Welfare schools, government schools and government-aided schools in the city would also be identified.

The earlier method of collecting data on dropouts in the city involved the compilation of data provided by the principals of schools. “Now, we will focus on door-to-door verification, as principals of most of the schools tend to provide misleading data on student dropouts in their schools,” said an official of SSA.

Tracking the dropouts and mainstreaming them is the biggest challenge, the official added.

Corporation Commissioner Rajesh Lakhoni said that the civic body was yet to have a comprehensive data on the dropouts from its schools.

A sample survey conducted in George Town last year found 550 children to be out of school.

Based on the data compiled from the school attendance registers last year, the number of school dropouts was 4,039 in Chennai, said an official.

The new survey would give the actual picture of the dropouts and students who are out of school, the official added. “I want to become a doctor. I have understood the importance of going to school,” said S.Sivakami, a Corporation school dropout who has been traced by officials of SSA recently.

Hundreds of students like her are in need of proper intervention, said the official.

Based on the findings of the survey, the Chennai Corporation and other agencies would decide on the strategy to reduce the dropout rate and measures to bring more children to school.