The School Education Department (SED) has started a fresh survey to identify the out-of-school children in districts across J&K.
The move comes after the department failed to enroll theout-of-school children in the schools for past many years.
An official in the civil secretariat here said the decisionto conduct the survey was taken after Ministry of Human Resource Development(MHRD) censured the Education Department for its “poor performance” inenrolling these students.
“For the past few years, the department could not identifythe out-of-school children in the state and enable them to join mainstreamschools. In view of this, the MHRD has asked the department to start a freshsurvey to collect data in this regard,” the official said.
On June 10, the Secretary Education and Literacy, MHRD,convened a project approval board (PAB) meeting of J&K’s SchoolEducation Department wherein it was revealed that the department has failed tomeet the target for enrollment of out-of-school children in schools.
Meanwhile, to begin with the department has now roped in anon-government organization (NGO) to conduct the fresh survey in two districtsof Budgam and Sambha on pilot basis.
“Budgam district has scores of brick kilns and scores ofchildren get involved in the child labour. Sambha has a huge industrial sectorwhich also engages children at tender age for various jobs,” the official said.
Earlier in 2017, the state government in its PAB meetingheld on 10 March 2017 had revealed that there were 27,355 OSC (out-of-schoolchildren) in the state, of which 10,942 will be enrolled in the schools duringthe 2017-18.
However, a meagre number of students joined the schoolsexposing the poor performance of the school education department.
“Against the target of 10,000 only 600 out of 4136 studentsregistered in non-residential special training centres (NRSTC) joined thenormal schools during 2017-18,” an official said.
State project Director Samagra Shiksha, Arun Kumar Manhasconfirmed that the department has started the pilot project for two districts,saying that their endeavour will be to cater to all districts.
“The difficult part in this issue is that we have to identifyboth residential as well as non- residential children who have never been toschool. In this, the concerned CEOs have to bring these students to nearbyschools and provide them bridge course and ultimate aim remains to enroll themin the mainstream schools,” he said.
He however said the department enrolls only 10 to 15 percentof these children in schools because most of them are keep on migrating.
“But we are working on it and hope that all the childrenjoin the formal schools,” he said.