More than 3 lakh children in Assam are still out of school
September 1, 2009: The Hindu
Guwahati: Even though one of the objectives of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) was that all children should be in school including the Education Guarantee Centre, the Alternate School and the ‘Back-to-School’ camp by 2003, and all children should complete five years of primary schooling by 2007, Assam still has 3,39,100 children who do not go to school.
Official records available with The Hindu reveal that of these “out of schoolchildren,¶ 1,96,774 (boys 1,02,418 and girls 94,356) are in the age group 6-11, while 1,42,326 (boys 75,863 and girls 66,463) are aged 11-14. These “out of school children¶ are mostly from remote areas and very poor families. A large number of them are working children living in urban slums and are categorised as the “Hard-to-Reach¶ group.
The dropout rate at both primary and upper primary levels in the State is also very high, much higher than at the national level. The dropout rate from classes I to V is 44.27% against 25.43% at the national level. At the upper primary level (classes VI to VIII), it is 63.56% against 46.03% at the national level. The literacy rate in the State is 63.3% (71.3%for men and 54.6% for women).
As for the SSA objective of focussing on elementary education with emphasis on education for life, the records reveal that quality of education is very poor due to untrained teachers. About 36% of teachers at the primary level and 10% at the upper primary level are untrained. About 20% of the 30,068 primary schools are single-teacher institutions.
About infrastructure, the less said the better. Only 6% of the primary schools have toilet facility for girls, while about 30% of schools do not have drinking water facility. There are about 2,305 schools without RCC or any permanent structure, while 156 schools are functioning without any building.
With such a large number of children continuing to remain out of schools, the State could utilise only 56.82% of funds released by the Ministry of Human Resource Development for implementation of the SSA for 2008-09. Against the approved outlay of Rs. 166.13 crore for the SSA for 2008-09, the utilisation was only Rs. 94.40 crore.
Implementation of the Mid-Day Meal scheme was also hampered by short lifting of foodgrains, delay in release of funds to schools for meeting the cooking cost, inadequate infrastructure and lack of monitoring and evaluation by the Education Department. The meal scheme was launched in 1995 with the objective of promoting universalisation of primary education by increasing enrolment, retention and learning levels and simultaneously bettering the nutritional status of primary school children. However, the District Nodal Officers did not lift 86,403 tonnes of foodgrains during the period 2003-2008. As a result, meals could not be served for 281 days.
