In order to stop children from dropping out of school, the Tamil Nadu school education department will be using the services of local body representatives. The ongoing out-of-school children survey has revealed that around 1.3 lakh kids have dropped out of schools in recent days in Tamil Nadu, as stated in a report by IANS.
As per the school education department officials, about 4,04,088 students under the age of 18 years were surveyed of which 1,38,821 were not enrolled in schools. Further, the survey also found out that most students drop out of school after their 10th standard. While some dropped out after failing the class X examinations, others dropped out as they had to support their families and opted for jobs.
However, in order to improve the quality of the survey and to convince the parents to make their wards continue in schools, the school education department has approached local body members. In this regard, Department sources told IANS that the state minister for school education Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi has already taken a specific interest and has communicated to his department officials to rope in local body members for the same.
How does it work?
The local body members who are in touch at the grass root levels can influence the parents of the children who drop out of tenth class even after passing the exam and urge them to make the children continue in school. A local body member at Kanniyakumari, who is elected from a BJP ticket, while speaking to IANS said: "I am with the minister in this and will do my best to prevent children from dropping out of school and will convince the parents of these children to make the students continue their education so that they get good opportunities in their life to achieve and reach higher levels."
What is the reason for dropping out? He said that the basic reason for dropping out of school is poverty and children want to support their parents who are not able to earn much. Meanwhile, the school education department is chalking out programmes so that the children are getting good counselling for continuing their education.
The department has already created a central database with the help of the Education Management Information System to focus on potential dropouts who have not attended classes for the last 15 days. Further, it is also targeting students who are opting out of schools and finding out students who have migrated to other blocks and districts.
In this regard, the higher officials of the department have presented a paper to the minister stating that in such cases of children moving out to other blocks and districts, the services of the local body representatives would be much useful, as stated in a report by IANS.
