The Tamil Nadu government has set up three-tier monitoring committees in all districts to ensure that all children in the state are enrolled in schools. These committees operate at the district, block and school levels.
These committees must work throughout the year and specifically focus on enrolling children under the age of five. Collectors need to convene district-level committees once a month to review the operations of block-level committees, reports The New Indian Express.
Officials from several agencies, including police, revenue and social welfare, will serve on this district-level committee. The coordinators of the block and school-level committees will be block education officials and school principals, respectively.
The district school education officials have been instructed to remove details of students enrolled in polytechnic and Industrial Training Institute (ITI) colleges. The Education Department of the state further instructed the teachers and Block Resource Teacher Educators (BRTEs) to monitor attendance and reach out to students who have been absent for three days a week.
The headmaster is now responsible for uploading details of students who are irregular for four weeks, in the out-of-school children application. They should also alert the parents of those students who are irregular through regular SMS. The committees should also ensure that children of homeless people, street vendors and migrant labourers are enrolled in schools in their districts.
"Earlier, there was a district education committee. However, it has not been active for several years, especially after COVID-19. We completed a survey to identify never enrolled students in May. Following that, the department instructed to form these committees to ensure that tracking out-of-school children becomes a year-round activity," said a BRTE in the Vellore district.
