PATNA: In a special post-lockdown drive, over 32 lakh children have been enrolled in Bihar’s government schools. The drive, christened as ‘Praveshotsav’, was launched across the state from March 8 to 24 by the education department to bring the school dropouts back to classrooms. The programme used the service of school teachers, Aanganwadi sevikas and the Jeevika-Didis.
According to education minister Vijay K Chaudhary, the state government is determined not to leave a single child out of school and the Praveshotsav has yielded a great result with good support from the people. According to the director of primary education Dr Ranjit K Singh, a total number of 32, 08,503 children have been brought back to classes 1 to 9 across the 38 districts.
“The children have been enrolled in nearly 69,558 government-run primary, upper secondary and high schools in the state”, Dr Singh said. He added that the parents were encouraged to send their wards to schools through various modes of communications including village meetings and dramas. The department has also enrolled 5,535 are differently-abled children.
The highest number of children -- 13,55,465 -- has been enrolled to class 1, while 5, 77,885 children have been enrolled to class 6. He said that the highest number of 772 differently-abled children have been enrolled in Nalanda district followed by 316 in West Champaran, 289 in Sitamarhi, 276 in Samastipur and 251 in Nawada. In the same way, Dr Singh said, 1,94,877 children have been enrolled in Muzaffarpur followed by 15,861 in Vaishali, 1,52,562 in Sitamarhi, 1,36,616 in Purnia, 1,32,209 in Madhubani, 1,28,684 in Nalanda, 1,27,453 in West Champaran and other districts.
Besides this, the department has also decided to start a 3-month long ‘Catch-Up class from April 8 for the pupils to help them cover their courses suffered during the lockdown