Drop out rate in Class 10 highest in Odisha: Education minister Pradhan

New Delhi: The drop out rate in Class 10 stands at 20.6 per cent as of 2021-22 with Odisha being the worst performing state in this regard followed by Bihar, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed the Lok Sabha on Monday.

The drop out rate in Class 10 was 49.9 per cent in Odisha and 42.1 per cent in Bihar, said Pradhan in his written response.

The minister was responding to a question by DMK MP Kalanidhi Veeraswamy on whether the government is cognizant of the analysis based on the recent exercise carried out by the Ministry of Education that about 3.5 million students stop their education in Class 10.

Pradhan informed that 1,89,90,809 students appeared for Class 10 examination in 2022, of which 29,56,138 students failed to progress to the next class.

"The reasons for failure of students in examination depends on various factors viz, not attending the schools, difficulty in following the instruction in schools, lack of interest in the studies, level of difficulty of question paper, lack of quality teachers, lack of support from parents, teachers and schools etc. Further, education is in the concurrent list of the Constitution and majority of the schools are under the domain of respective State and UT Governments," said Pradhan.

The ministry shared the details of students' dropout rate at Class 10 for the last four years (2018-19 to 2021-22) state-wise.

Apart from Odisha and Bihar, the other states with high dropouts are Meghalaya (33.5 per cent), Karnataka (28.5 per cent), Andhra Pradesh and Assam with 28.3 per cent each, Gujarat (28.2 per cent) and Telangana (27.4 per cent).

The states with dropout rate less than 10 per cent include Uttar Pradesh (9.2 per cent), Tripura (3.8 per cent), Tamil Nadu (9 per cent), no dropout in Manipur, Madhya Pradesh (9.8 per cent), Himachal Pradesh (2.5 per cent), Haryana (7.4 per cent) and Delhi (1.3 per cent).

While Assam has shown marked improvement in the last four years from 44 to 28.3 per cent, Odisha on the other hand witnessed a negative trend from 12.8 to 49.9 per cent in the same period.