Survey on dropouts nears completion

'Identifying children of migrant workers a tricky issue'

The just-concluded Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) pilot survey of out-of-school children (OOSC) has found that a large number of them, identified at Channasandra in Bangalore, are from outside the State.

The consolidation of the findings of the survey is likely to be completed in the next few days.

The SSA began the pilot survey last week to get a clear picture of the number of children who are out of school. The survey was also conducted in one cluster in Chikkaballapur. The officials aim to identify three different categories of children: dropouts, schoolgoing and those who have never enrolled themselves in schools.

“There exists a sizeable floating population in Channasandra and most of the these children who are out of school belong to states like West Bengal, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. Those from the state make up a very small part of the total figure and mainly come from the northern districts like Raichur, Gulbarga and Bijapur,” said Block Resource Coordinator (BRC), South-4, M S Krishnappa.

According to officials, out of the 18,306 families that were surveyed in this cluster, as many as 411 children were found to be either out of school or those that have never been enrolled in one. The large migrant population in the area mainly work as construction labourers in the fast developing real estate sector, according to officials. They pointed out a case of a construction site near Kadugondanahalli in the area where there are around 80 labourer sheds.

“A total of 20 children fit to got to school have been found here. However, only five to seven children were found to be going to school,” said Manjunath Naik, Cluster Resource Person (CRP), Channasandra.

In a number of cases, officials found that one of the main reasons for children of these migrant families not enrolling in schools is that the children had to stay at home to take care of their siblings and the household, while their parents were out working.

“There are as many as six ‘tent schools’ in Channasandra and each caters to 20 to 120 children. Had it not been for these schools, the number of out-of-school children would have been higher,” said Krishnappa.

The data collected for the survey is based on both school records as well as field survey of families and households. So far as the former is concerned, officials found 265 OOSC between 2011 to 2013. Based on the household survey, officials discovered that there are 146 children who were out of school. A total of 29 schools - 16 government and 13 private schools each - were surveyed.

The survey also found that there were 9,038 children who were in school - government and private - with most of them coming from more well to do backgrounds. The pilot survey was conducted at Channasandra as well as in Chikkaballapur between September 2 to September 10 as part of the Education department’s effort to determine the exact number of OOSC in the State.

The last survey in the area was conducted three years ago in those areas that were “projected to have a presence” of OOSC like slums.

Migrant families

Teachers involved in the survey opined that the tricky part was to identify the floating population.

“Whitefield and Kadugodi areas in Bangalore have a lot of construction work going on. Migrant families leave the place after the construction work is complete. They would have enrolled their children in school during their stay here and would have left without transfer certificates. It is difficult to track them.” However, more data would emerge once the findings are consolidated.