Edu department brings out policy for migrant children

The primary and secondary education department has come out with a policy for migrant children and the children of migrated daily wage employees in the state. The objective of the policy is to ensure that migrated children in 6-14 age group are not deprived of education.

The policy is the outcome of a report submitted by an expert committee constituted on the direction of the Karnataka High Court. The policy, titled, “Migrated children and Children of migrated daily wagers Right for Free and Compulsory Education Policy 2019,” distributes the responsibility among various government agencies including Women and Child Development department, Rural Development and Panchayat Raj and Labour department.

The policy makes it mandatory for block-level officers of the education department and head of institutions to maintain movement register in respect of migrated children mainly to track them.

Currently, if a migrated child is brought back to school, it is difficult to keep track of the child if he/she stops coming to school or migrates to another city. “This is why we have decided to link movement registers with online Students Achievement Tracking System (SATS). With this, it would be easy to track the movement of each child and ensure they are admitted back to school at the new place to which they have migrated” an official explained.

The official said that even in the Out of School Children survey report it is mentioned that the major reason for children being out of schools is migration. “Taking this seriously, we have brought out this policy,” added official.