CHENNAI: At 11am on a weekday, several school-going-age children were strolling on the corridors and streets of Ezhil Nagar, which is one of Tamil Nadu Urban Habitat Development Board’s largest resettlement sites with 8,048 economically-backward families resettled from core city in 2013. While the infrastructure issues bedeviling the settlement have been widely reported, the number of out-of-school students here indicates a deeper malaise.
TNIE visited the site after a recent survey by the Information and Resource Centre for Deprived Urban Communities found 89 students to be out of school here, some of them for three years. Of this, 51 children were girls and 48 of them were between the ages of 5 and 14.
TNIE found at least seven out-of-school children within a span of a few blocks. Most children said their school was too far. Since they would miss school frequently due to the long distance, they eventually stop going to schools. With their parents themselves travelling long distances, mostly to the northern parts of the city for work, they are unable to monitor their children.
In one case, a nine-year-old girl stopped attending school after her family told her to stay back to attend to her mother, who was paralysed waist-down, while her brother continued to go to school. In another case, a 10-year-old girl told TNIE that she stopped going to her aided school in Adyar after the boys in her class repeatedly used ‘bad words’ and the teacher failed to intervene.
A 15-year-old and her 7-year-old brother both stopped going to school nearly three years ago after their grandmother, their sole custodian, fell sick. At home, the girl children take up domestic chores, including cooking and running errands.
According to the survey results, at least six children who stayed out of school also complained about lack of government documents for school admissions.
Most of the children here study in government and government-aided schools in Adyar, Triplicane, Parrys, Santhome, Little Mount or T Nagar. Students said the schools did not attempt to find out the reason for their absence in most cases. Although Kannagi Nagar, another huge resettlement colony, is located just metres away from Ezhil Nagar, the problem of out-of-school students seems to be a typical trouble of Ezhil Nagar.
“Kannagi Nagar has a (government) high school. But due to the large number of families there, the school is almost always at full capacity and children from here have to go to either Sholinganallur or Thuraipakkam, around two km away,” said a parent. Next to Kannagi Nagar, Sholinganallur and Thuraipakkam are the nearest government schools to Ezhil Nagar.
The behaviour also seems contagious as even if one family allows its child to skip school, others follow suit. “Several of the families here are related to each other or have known each other for a long time. When one person opts out of school, it becomes an easy option for all the other children of the family,” said Sathya (name-changed), a Class 11 student.
Vanessa Peter, founder of IRCDUC, said that in many of the cases at Ezhil Nagar, even minor interventions from the government could have put the children back in school, like in cases of those who lacked government documents.
“Identifying and enrolling such children should be an ongoing activity throughout the year. Multi-pronged approach should be adopted to ensure that children are enrolled and continue to study in school. Efforts should be taken to identify and engage with children facing multiple vulnerabilities to ensure access to education and protection from exploitation,” Vanessa said.
While the survey focuses on children who have stayed out of school in the long term, children told TNIE that short-term absenteeism was also common and is rarely questioned by the schools.
When contacted, a senior official of TNUHDB said the dedicated women and child development officials from the board will undertake a survey along with the school education department before June to ensure that as many children as possible are admitted to schools next year.