Odisha govt steps in to reduce matric dropout rates
Last week Odisha’s School and Mass Education minister Samir Ranjan Dash announced that his department would go in for a new door-to-door survey to trace the Class X students who did not turn up on the first day of the board examination conducted by the state. The number of absentees hovered around 13,000, about 2.5 per cent of approximately 5.41 lakh students who registered for the high school certificate (HSC) examination. The minister said the figure was not as alarming as it was made out to be and pointed to last year’s annual state board test, which 45,000 students skipped. He also detailed the measures the government has been taking to successfully bring the dropouts back into the academic fold through various other platforms like open schooling and vocational education across the state.
However, concerns do linger if one goes by the survey under the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+). The UDISE+ is the management information system of the Union Ministry of Education’s Department of School Education and Literacy for the entire country. Its data suggests that the dropout rate in Class IX–X of secondary schools in Odisha stood at 27.3 per cent against a national average of 12.6 per cent in 2021–22. It marked a jump compared to the previous year’s 16 per cent. The UDISE data has been contested by the minister, who maintained that it does not consider students who go on to enrol themselves in various vocational institutions, polytechnics and open school systems. The UDISE data is divided into two categories: those dropping out after Class IX and going into Class X, and those transitioning from Class X to Class XI. The transition rate in Odisha stands at 49.9 per cent.
Irrespective of the statistics, the Odisha government’s plans to go in for the door-to-door survey are welcome. Still, it must go deeper to understand the serious impact of Covid-19 on the education sector, a pandemic that affected the lives and livelihoods of economically weaker sections in the state. Critical issues such as child marriage, labour and migration must be studied threadbare to ensure no student leaves the school education system because of economic and access reasons alone. If Odisha can show the way by implementing projects to transform thousands of high schools under its 5T Initiative, it can close the dropout chapter too.