BHUBANESWAR: As many as 49,098 secondary school students in the State have dropped out before their transit to higher secondary level in the recent years. They include 15,792 tribal and 11,045 from scheduled caste category.
School and Mass Education Minister Sameer Ranjan Dash on Wednesday informed the Assembly that the highest 6,731 students including 2,086 ST and 905 SC students dropped out in Kalahandi district followed by 3,587 (1,821 ST and 618 SC) in Koraput left education midway.
The lowest 13 students including seven tribals did not transit from secondary to senior secondary in Mayurbhanj district, followed by 19 including one tribal student in Cuttack district.
Among the coastal districts, 2,363 students in Ganjam, 1,822 in Bhadrak, 1,734 in Khurda, 1,592 in Balasore, 1,364 in Jagatsinghpur and 1,255 in Puri have dropped out.
In Sundargarh, 3,426 students dropped out and in Angul 2,715. Similarly, 2,679 students left education midway in Bargarh, 2,350 in Nuapada, 2,020 in Malkangiri and 2,011 in Keonjhar.
The Minister said 8,168 students dropped out of schools in the State after the educational institutions were closed as a preventive measure following the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic in March last year. The highest 896 students dropped out in Nuapada district followed by 681 in Keonjhar and 603 in Khurda. While Boudh was at the bottom with only 21 students dropping out other districts with low dropout rate are Sonepur, Jharsuguda and Dhenkanal.
“The District Education Officers (DEOs) and the PD DRDAs have been asked to implement different schemes under the Samagra Sikshya Abhiyan to bring back the dropouts to educational institutions” he said. Dash said the dropout rate was 16.06 per cent in Odisha as against the national average of 16.1 pc. The State government had imparted education to around 33.52 per cent of students from Class I to X through Youtube during the pandemic, he added.