BENGALURU: Five students from challenging economic backgrounds have rejoined Classes 10 and 8 through the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS).
This is thanks to the Sparsha Trust which has been working for more than two decades to educate children of ragpickers and hairpickers by approaching the families door to door.
The National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) is an autonomous government organisation under the Union Ministry of Education that provides flexible and inclusive education through open and distance learning. Divya S, Bhavani, Aruna V, Devaraj and Uma G, who were in government schools in Bengaluru, had to discontinue their studies in 2023 and 2024.
Devaraj, who was in Class 8, said, "I was studying at Karnataka Public School in Tavarekere. I had to discontinue because of financial problems at home. My father repairs gas stove by going door to door, while my mother is a hairpicker. She sells hair to a dealer who is from our community. Both of them earn enough to provide food for us for a day. I was working with my father to help our family. Now, I have rejoined classes through NIOS and will write the Class 10 exam in March 2026."
Uma, whose parents too are wastepickers, said she will write her Class 8 exams next year. "I studied until Class 7 at the Kuntigrama government school and had to discontinue due to personal problems." Divya too is writing her Class 10 exam. "I dropped out of school in 2023 after completing Class 9 at Gangamma Hombegowda Girls High School.
My mother works as a maid, while my father is a construction worker. Apart from regular classes, I am also attending computer courses under a career guidance programme by Sparsha Trust. I have learnt Powerpoint and MS Excel till now," she said. Bhavani will write her Class 10 and Aruna V her Class 8 exam.
Community workers from Sparsha put in a lot of work and held intense counselling to help these children get back to school and to stop them from becoming ragpickers or hairpickers.
Anil Kumar, Knowledge and MIS manager at Sparsha, said, "It is difficult to convince parents to send their children back to school. Children drop out of schools for various reasons. Usually, when parents have more than two children, they ask the elder child to take care of younger siblings. This stops them from going to school.
Also, single parents see children as one more pair of hands to earn for the family." He said that some of these children hail from areas like Kadabagere and Kuntigrama where there is a severe water shortage. Water is supplied once in eight days, rendering these areas unhygienic. This leads to children falling sick often and they skip school.
But they don't go back to school once they get better as they fear that the teachers would beat them."He said, "We took six months to convince their parents. In the meantime, we conducted bridge courses to brush up their basic knowledge in all the subjects. We also assessed their learning through class tests at our Remedial Education Centre and decided to help them to pursue education in NIOS."