More than 5,000 students (aged 5-19) of Chandigarh’s schools and colleges have to work to earn their livelihood or support their families, says Census data that was released a few days ago.
Of the 2.89 lakh people in the age group of 5-19 in the Union Territory, only 2.33 lakh (80.8%) are attending educational institutions. This means over 55,000 youngsters in this age group are not studying anywhere.
Of those attending educational institutions, 3,469 are main workers (who work for over six months in a year) and 1,768 are marginal workers (who work for less than 6 months). Of the 5,237 working students, 1,978 are girls (37.8%).
There are 55,387 (19.2%) youngsters who are not attending any educational institutions. Of these, 30,966 (56%) never attended an educational institution while 24,421 (44 %) are dropouts. Among those who are not attending any educational institutions, 15,544 are main workers, 1,253 are marginal workers (working for 3-6 months) and 378 marginal workers (working for less than three months). The data was collected in 2011.
“The data is useful for finding school dropouts and effectiveness of education programmes,” said prof Aswini Kumar Nanda, population research centre, Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID).
{{/usCountry}}“The data is useful for finding school dropouts and effectiveness of education programmes,” said prof Aswini Kumar Nanda, population research centre, Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID).
{{/usCountry}}In the neighboring Haryana, 1.63 lakh students in the age group of 5-19 are working while 17.72 lakh are not attending any educational institutions.
Haryana has a total of 78.44 lakh in this age group of which 60.72 lakh (77.4%) go to educational institutions. Out of those attending educational institutions, 49,010 are main workers and 1.14 lakh are marginal workers. Of more than 17 lakh (22.6 %) in the age group, who are not attending any educational institution, 7.02 lakh (39.6%) are dropouts while 10.7 lakh (60.4%) never went to school. In Punjab, 1.5 lakh students are working. In Punjab, 1.5 lakh students are working. More than 19 lakh of 77.69 lakh people in age group of 5-19 are not studying.