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By | 3 Feb, 2018
The consolidated data would not only help identify the number of children, but would also help identify the root-causes for children going out-of-school.
Mahabubnagar: With an aim of identifying and putting out-of-school children (OSCs) back in schools, the State government is conducting a door-to-door survey in rural areas under the aegis of Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP).
Women’s Self Help groups in every village have been given the responsibility of conducting the survey by taking the data of children between the age group of 3 to 18 from Anganwadi centres and government schools in rural areas to identify OSCs. Already APMs, CCs/MSCCs and VOAs have been given awareness on how to gather the data and now the survey is going to start.
OSCs have been divided into three groups-those who have never been enrolled in schools, those who dropped-out of schools and those who are working, or who may have migrated to other places with their families.
Details like the reasons for going out of school, where they are working, their wages, hours of work, reasons for migration, whether any skill development training taken or if they need any training in skills, are all recorded from the households where children have become OSC.
Earlier, districts’ administrations used to rely on the data available with the Department of Education to know how many children had become OSC. However, there used to be a major discrepancy in the department’s figures and actual reality. This has hindered efforts of the administration to address the issue.
With this new way to tackle the issue, Department of Education, Department of Labour, Anganwadis and SHGs are being put on the same page, as the SHG volunteers (VOAs) would be taking data from all the above departments regarding OSCs and children working outside would double-check the data by going to every house, enquiring about the child’s present status and noting them down in the prescribed forms. Though the data available with all these three departments may not match, a final consolidated-hopefully ‘close-to-reality’ data may come out of this exercise which is being funded by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA).
The consolidated data would not only help identify the number of children, but would also help identify the root-causes for children going out-of-school.
The survey would also identify from which communities children have been becoming OSC more and the reasons for it. The exercise would definitely help the district administrations in Mahabubnagar, Nagarkurnool, Wanaparthy and Jogulamba Gadwal districts, where migration and illiteracy are high. The survey is expected to be be completed within the next couple of weeks, when the results would be known.
