E-Paper
Punjab saw 15-fold jump in school dropout rate in last 4 years
The state has witnessed a massive spike in the dropout rate at secondary level in government schools
The state has witnessed a massive spike in the dropout rate at secondary level in government schools. The dropout rate has jumped from 1.6% in 2019-20 to 17.2% in 2021-2022, statistics of the Union ministry of education have revealed.
The dropout rate is much higher than the national average. In fact it happens for the first time in the last five academic sessions when the state has crossed the national average of school dropouts. Meanwhile, the neighbouring states have recorded sharp decline in the dropout rate.
Dr Subhas Sarkar, Union minister of state for education, on Monday furnished the statistics in response to state-wide details sought in Parliament by Nama Nageswara Rao, member parliament from Khamman constituency of Telangana.
He informed the house that the Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL) has developed the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) system to record data on indicators of school education provided by all the states and Union Territories (UTs).
According to the DoSEL, the dropout rate at secondary level in the government schools in Punjab was 1.6% in the academic session of 2019-20, 9% was in the 2020-21 and 17.2% in 2021-22.
However, the national average of dropouts at secondary level rate was 16.1% in 2019-20, 14.0% in 2020-21 and 12.6% 2021-22.
Meanwhile, in the neighbouring state Haryana, the dropout rate at secondary level has come down to 5.9% in 2021-22 from 13.3% from 2019-20. In Himachal Pradesh, the dropout rate also declined to 1.5% in 2021-22 from 7.2 in 2019-2020.
The minister also informed the house that education is in the concurrent list of the Constitution and majority of the schools are under the domain of respective governments. However, DoSEL with the effect from 2018-19, has launched Samagra Shiksha, an integrated centrally sponsored scheme for the school.
The motive of the scheme is to ensure access to quality education to all students with an equitable and inclusive classroom environment. Under the scheme, financial assistance is provided to states and union territories for undertaking various activities to reduce the number of Out of School Children (OoSC) including opening/strengthening of new schools upto senior secondary level.
“Further, special training for age appropriate admission of out of school children and residential as well as non-residential training for older children, seasonal hostels / residential camps, special training centres at worksites, transport/ escort facility are also supported to bring out of school children to the formal schooling system,” minister stated in the response.
The ministry has provided ₹462.39 crore Samagra Shiksha funds for the academic session of 2019-20, ₹531.43 crore for 2020-21 and ₹501.27 crore for 2021-22.
State president Teachers’ Democratic Front (DTF) Vikram Dev Singh said, “Majority of students in the government schools are from economically weaker sections and migrant classes. Covid-19 has left adverse impact on these two sections and their children are shifting to manual labour to help their poor families. A large number of migrant labourers have also moved to their native states after outbreak of Covid-19. Besides, the schools had remained closed during the pandemic and the government emphasised on online education which also did not suit the economically downtrodden. There could be other reasons too. Therefore, the government should conduct a student outreach to find the reasons.”
Director general of school education, Vinay Bublani, said, “I am in the middle of a meeting. I could not comment on it.” Tejdeep Singh Saini, director public instructions, secondary education, did not respond to repeated calls and messages. Punjab education minister Harjot Bains, said, “We are working very hard to improve things in the education.”
