As many as 27,725 students are out of schools in rural areas in the state and the numbers across Karnataka are expected to go up further, as the state's education department officials tell TNIE that clean figures from the Urban Development Department (UDD) and Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) are yet to come in.
The department is working against the clock as district officials are said to have been given a target to mainstream all children by the end of the month. The department has mainstreamed 11,832 children till now, as per official statistics from the Samagra Shikshana Karnataka (SSK) department on Thursday, November 25.
The education department remains abuzz, compiling and cleaning data of out-of-school children, which includes children who have never been enrolled in school and those who have dropped out of school. To trace the first category is an arduous task, admitted an official as children who have never gone to school need to be traced — for this purpose, ground level staffers are going house to house and collecting data.
Meanwhile, the students who have dropped out are being traced via their previous schools. A senior education official in the department added that attendance officers who work at the school level also traced where the child has gone — if found in a different school — then the database is updated.
If the child is found not attending school, then they are convinced to come back. This comes following a PIL filed in the High Court. Parallelly, the education department is also trying to clear out the school admission stalemate by ordering private schools to provide transfer certificates to students who want to enrol in other schools.
