Free uniforms and textbooks, not to speak of mid-day meals, offered by government schools are not lure enough for more than a lakh potential students in the State.
This came to light when the Sarva Shikshana Abhiyan, before printing textbooks and giving orders for school uniforms, conducted a survey on the  rate of drop-out and those who have never been to school.
The survey revealed that around 1.07 lakh students are not going to enroll at schools this year.
Education Department sources told Deccan Herald that this year, around 61,000 of these are drop-outs while nearly 40,000 are those who have no idea what a school is. The figure includes a sizable number of 5-year-olds.
The figure wasn’t this high last year, when it was around 70,000. So the increase in the number by around 30,000 is a matter of concern. A majority of the school-averse children are in northern Karnataka.
North ‘worst-hit’
Nearly 50 per cent of the reluctant children (around 45,000) are from Gulbarga Division, which includes the educational districts of Gulbarga, Bidar, Raichur, Yadgir, Bellary, Chikkodi and Koppal. District-wise statistics reveal that Bagalkot in north Karnataka has the highest number of them.
Worried at these numbers, the Directorate of Sarva Shikshana Abhiyan has decided to ‘strengthen’ some schemes, including the six-month seasonal bridge course for migrating children, mobile schools for those living in cities, the 12-month residential bridge course, the Asha Kiran project for the poor and the two-month Chinnara Angana project for dropouts aged 7 to 8.