While there are around 35,000 out-of-school children in the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) limits, the authority claimed the numbers are exaggerated, they would be cross-verifying it, reported Aknisree Karthik of The New Indian Express.
As per the survey conducted by the Centre for e-Governance, Karnataka H2H Children Survey, 35,000 children are not going to school in Bengaluru. The door-to-door survey is intended to identify children who are out of school and those who have failed to enrol, and bring them to school as mandated under Article 21A of the Constitution, which guarantees free and compulsory education for children between 6 and 14 years. A top GBA official said, “The survey started around five months ago to identify out-of-school children in Bengaluru, under GBA limits. According to the survey, 35,000 children are out of school. We feel the number is exaggerated and are cross-checking.”
The official said the survey commenced in February and continued during the summer vacation, when children are at home, so the number could be on the higher side, and erroneous.
“We will cross-verify the numbers with SATS (Student Achievement Tracking System) ID, a unique 9-digit number assigned to students in government schools, and data from the state education department. We will also verify the numbers with the Kutumba database (a social registry of all households comprising citizen data). As per my estimation, dropouts in a city like Bengaluru, where we have enough government schools offering free education, would be around 3,000 only,” he said. He went on to say that a ward-level task force, led by Group A and B officials, will be set up to re-enrol children who are out of school during this academic year only.
“All measures will be taken to put them back into the 117 BBMP schools and 500 government schools. If needed, they will be enrolled in aided and residential schools, with the help of the Child Welfare Committee. Often, the dropouts are poor, children of migrant workers, and physically challenged,” he said.
Development Educationist Niranjanaradhya VP said 35,000 is not an exaggerated number, and if we take into account the en masse internal and external migration to Bengaluru city, the number is very small.He said the problem of children dropping out of schools is a much bigger issue. “This is a clear violation of Section 4 of the Right to Education (RTE) Act. It is a great concern for us that even after 15 years of the RTE Act, such a large number of children are out of school.”
He suggested that the GBA immediately prepares a roadmap to bring back all children to mainstream schooling in consultation with the education department.