The State Government has attributed the rise in enrolment of students and fall in drop-out rate to bicycle scheme launched by it. In the entire State, enrolment at the secondary level has gone up to 77 per cent while the drop out rate has declined to 18 per cent.
The scheme to provide free bicycles to girl students and ST and SC boys of Class X in Government and aided schools in 118 tribal dominated blocks in the State was launched by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in October, 2011.
After facing criticism from different quarters for discriminating students of general category, the State Government extended the scheme to Class-X students belonging to BPL category a year later.
The opening of new secondary schools and development of hostel facilities for tribal students have contributed to retention of students. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Wednesday reviewed the progress achieved in universalisation of secondary education under the Rastriya Madhyamik Siksha Abhiyan (RMSA) at a high level meeting here.
The programme launched in 2009-10 aims at extending secondary education to all the children in the age group of 11 to 14 years by 2017. As per the RMSA norms, each habitation will have a secondary school within five-km radius. The State requires another 479 schools to cover all the villages, official sources said.
Presently, the State has 9,344 secondary schools out of which 4,951 are Government schools, 2,645 aided schools and 1748 private schools. The total strength of students in these schools is 12 lakh. While 6.91 lakh students are studying in Government schools, the aided schools have 3.42 lakh students and the private schools have 1.66 students.
Of 173 educational backward blocks, the Government has planned to open model schools in 162 blocks. Meanwhile, the Centre has sanctioned proposals for 111 blocks. The meeting decided to appoint 2737 teachers on contractual basis to fill up existing vacancies. Special coaching will be provided to students in the district affected by Left wing ultras.