6.5 crore Indians never attended school: Census

The latest Census data released by the Registrar General of India (RGI) has revealed that nearly 6.54 crore people in the age group of 5-19 years never attended any school and another 4.49 crore dropped out of schools in the last decade.

As per Census data, compiled till 2011, 38.01 crore people in the country were in the age group of 5-19 years, out of which 26.98 crore (71 per cent) were attending educational institutions, 4.49 crore (11.8 per cent) had attended schools and 6.54 crore (17.2 per cent) had never been to a school.

Similarly, there were 65.7 lakh disabled people in the age group of 5-19 years, out of which 17.5 lakh (26.7 per cent) never attended any school and 8 lakh (12.1 per cent) had dropped out of schools and 40.2 lakh people (61.2 per cent) were attending schools.

The ratio of disabled persons who never attended any educational institution in 2011, was found to be the highest among persons with ‘multiple disability’ (54.4 per cent).

This was followed by those with ‘mental illness’ (50.3 per cent) and ‘mental retardation’ (41.2 per cent), whereas persons with ‘any other disability’ (17.7 per cent) showed the least percentage. Similarly, out of 40.2 lakh disabled persons attending schools, 22.8 lakh (56.7 per cent) were males and 17.4 lakh (43.3 per cent) were females. There was an improvement of about 11 percentage in disabled persons in the age-group 5-19 years attending schools in the decade 2001-2011.

Differently abled people with ‘any other disability’ showed the highest percentage (71.2 per cent) in attending schools.

This was followed by those having disabilities related to ‘seeing’ (68 per cent), ‘hearing’ (67 per cent), ‘movement’ (59.6 per cent), ‘speech’ (58.9 per cent), ‘mental retardation’ (47.2 per cent), ‘multiple disability’ (37.2 per cent) and ‘mental illness’ (34.1 per cent).