Give sops, get children into schools, HC tells Government

The High Court on Thursday, asked the government to provide cash incentives to parents in order to bring back children, currently out of school, to classrooms.

Hearing a suo motu petition regarding implementation of Right to Education Act, Division Bench, comprising Chief Justice D H Waghela and Justice B V Nagarathna — following a submission by social activist Kathyayini Chamaraj — directed the government to provide, by the next hearing, a list of all NGOs currently involved in bringing children back to school.

Objecting to the State Education Department’s claims that only 51,994 children are out of school, Chamaraj, in her submission stated that according to the survey carried out by her and government records, there are 6,28,047 children who have either dropped out or are missing, after enrolment in the last seven years.

“A total of 78,76,110 children were enrolled into Class 1 the last seven years from 2005-06 to 2011-12. In 2012-13, they would be in Class 2 to 8. According to government’s own enrolment figures, however, children in Class 2 to 8 in 2012-13, number only 72,48,063.  Hence, there are 6,28,047 children who have either dropped out, or are missing, after enrolment the last seven years,” she said.

“Even if only 51,994 children are out of school during 2012-13 and 34,034 out of these have been given special training to mainstream them, it still leaves 17,960 out of school.

These figures have been arrived following door-to-door surveys undertaken every January by Education Department for creating list of eligible children for compulsory primary education. The figure stated by Education Department does not match with actual number of children dropped out of school,”she submitted.

The division bench, observed that, “the problem might be larger than what you are projecting.”