34,000 children out of school in Karnataka, 6,000 in BBMP limits

Bengaluru may be the IT capital of India but the final report of a door-to-door survey to identify out-of-school children shows that the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has the highest number of children who have no access to education.

The report from Samagra Shikshana Karnataka (SSK), earlier known as Sarva Shikha Abhiyan, shows that 34,411 children in the state are out of school. This includes children who never enrolled and those who dropped out. Of them, 6,608 are from BBMP limits.

According to SSK, three main reasons for children being out of school are: health issues, financial crisis and family issues. The details of the survey have been shared with the officials concerned at the district level.

“They have been asked to share the data with taluk and block-level officers. These officers have to meet the parents/guardians of out-of-school children to know the reasons for them being away from schools and submit a report to the state project director,” said an official from SSK.

In BBMP limits, more children in the 14-16 age group are not attending schools (4,465) while 2,143 are out of schools in the 6-14 age group.

Bidar district followed the BBMP with 2,609 such children while Udupi district reported the least number of such kids (172).

According to officials involved in the survey, children in the age group of 14 to 16 years dropped out due to financial crisis in families because of the Covid-19 pandemic in the last two years. “In many cases, older children have dropped out and joined jobs to support families during the pandemic,” said an official.

In all the 31 districts, 21,300 children who enrolled dropped out for various reasons.

Recently, the Karnataka High Court had taken note of the high number of children remaining out of school and asked officials to conduct a door-to-door survey.

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