VIJAYAWADA: “According to the Right to Education Act, people who stop children from going to schools need to be imprisoned. But not a single case has been registered so far in the State,” MLC AS Ramakrishna said. He said that the Centre was reducing allocations to the education sector and emphasised on the need of sending all children to schools.Ramakrishna was speaking at a workshop organised by the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), here on Friday to determine the optimal action plan needed to educate the out-of-school children. More than 1.3 lakh such children have been identified for re-enrolment programme undertaken by the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.
“Based on the People Pulse Survey, we have identified over 1.3 lakh children without enrolment in any school. We are working on the best action plan to achieve a 100 percent admission rate in schools,” G Srinivas, SSA’s state project director, said in the workshop. “Also, we are planning to reduce the school-dropout rate in the tribal areas with the help of academic books written in their regional languages,” he added.
MLC V Bala Subramanyam complimented SSA for its efforts to identify the children, who were not going to schools and then send them to schools. He said that there should be a proper plan to send the children, who are out of schools, to schools. “Now that we have some data to work with, we can proceed by designing an action plan and then implement it,” Ramakrishna said.
At the workshop, it was decided that the out-of-school children would be sent to residential schools, non-residential and residential special training centres (NRSTC), hostels, urban residential schools and hostels, madrasas and veda patasalas. The workshop was supported by Childline and Municipal Administration and Urban Development Department.