CHENNAI: This Independence Day, Chinna Kannan (18), a resident of Kongadai in Erode, on Monday visited Chennai that had taken on a tricolour hue to mark 75 years of hard-earned freedom. Along with 40 other students from the interiors of Erode, Chinna Kannan also visited Birla planetarium and Egmore museum, charms from a bygone era.
Just last year, Kannan was toiling away on a sugarcane farm in his district. Rescued from child labour nearly six years ago, he studied in Kongadai till Class 8 and then travelled to Anthiyur to pursue higher secondary school education.
“My father was working as a daily wage labourer. After he fell sick, my elder brother and I had to work to run our family and support the education of our three younger siblings. I stopped going to school last year. My brother discontinued after joining college,” said the recipient of the 2018 young scientist award.
The 40 students that travelled with Kannan from Chennai, too, dropped out of school after the pandemic’s economic devastation. Some started working in textile companies and bakeries. Sudar, an NGO working with ST children, had brought these students to the city to meet school education department staff. Many kids, aged between 12 to 17, said they had not gone to school for two years now, and had not returned to classrooms despite the door-to-door survey conducted by the school education department. While Samagra Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) door-to-door surveys of children aged six to 19 were held for the past two years, it is unable to trace all the dropouts leading to educationists questioning its effectiveness.
“These are students only from a handful of villages in Erode. There are lakh of students like them across the State. There are gaps in tracing the students with help of the school education department survey. Steps should be taken to address these gaps apart from providing financial support,” said Natraj, Sudar director. Earlier this year, TN Block Resource Teacher Educators (TN-BRTE) Association submitted a petition to the Samagra Shiksha project director R Sudhan to take steps to prevent recurring dropouts.
“Presently, the school dropouts are traced with help of the Educational Management Information System (EMIS) that trace long absentees and children who have received transfer certificates but have not joined school. After Covid-19, the dropout rate, which was 1-2%, rose to 5% in some areas. The door-to-door survey was also not conducted properly as more than 50% of the BRTE positions are vacant. While there should be 6,000 BRTEs, there are only 2,800. The survey has to be conducted properly to bring all of them back to school,” KP Balaji, State secretary of the TN-BRTE Association.
Despite repeated attempts, school education department officials were not available for comments.