Stark decline in school dropouts in DK district

Mangalore city has 100 per cent enrollment

A total of 38 boys and 26 girls between ages 6 and 14 have been identified as out of school children. Belthangady taluk has identified eight school dropouts whereas Mangalore taluk has one dropout. Moodbidri has seven, Bantwal has eight, Puttur has 10 and Sullia has 30 dropouts. However, Mangalore City has emerged to have full enrollment with no dropouts.

Speaking to Deccan Herald, SSA Assistant Project Officer Geetha Devdas says that the ‘Besige Chinnara Angala,’ a bridge course to train dropouts before they are enrolled to school which is usually conducted every year in April, May and June was not conducted this year due to the lack of students.

The 64 identified children have been made to join the portals of school directly where they will receive special attention in the supplementary training programme conducted every year in all Government schools in the month of June.

A pre test on the previous year’s syllabus will be conducted for all students in government schools and on the basis of results, a supplementary training will be held to refresh the students.

A pro test will be conducted after the training and if all the students pass, the new syllabus will be taught, says Geetha and adds that all schools have been advised to give individual attention to the dropouts.

Most of the out of school children are the ones who have migrated from other places. Every school has been given the responsibility to identify these children in their locality and enroll them to school, says Geetha.

The dropout rate is the lowest this year compared to the last 9 years, reveals Geetha.  There were 7,656 dropouts in 2002, 4,965 in 2003, 4,213 in 2004, 1,551 in 2005, 1,076 in 2006, 734 in 2007, 450 in 2008, 149 in 2009 and 692 in 2010, she adds.

“The last year’s dropout rate was quite shocking and School Development Monitoring Committees and Block Resource Centers were asked to visit the houses of dropout school children convincing them to join school. This year the number is less but work is still on to get the dropout rate to Zero,” says Deputy Director of Public Instruction Chame Gowda.