BENGALURU: The state government’s claim that there are only 9,468 out-of-school children in Karnataka has been demolished by a survey of one of its own statutory bodies.
A recent survey by the Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights puts the number of children not attending school at 1.61 lakh, which is nearly twenty times more than the earlier figure of over 9,000 arrived at by the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) in January this year.
Even the recent statement by Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar in the Lok Sabha stated that Karnataka still has 1.22 lakh out-of-school children. Expressing shock at this figure, SSA state project director C P Jafer had said then, “Our first survey too identified 1.20 lakh children as out of school, but during January 2016 we did a re-survey after bringing them to mainstream where it shows the number is around 9,000.”
However, the Child Rights Commission’s survey, under the project “Shaale kadege nanna nadige”, is the latest.
The Commission is yet to release the report. Express has got hold of the report.
Speaking to Express, a top official of the Commission said, “We got the survey done by contacting the parents and children across the state and the report will be submitted to the education department.”