‘1.4 lakhs kids out of school in state’

Report exposes govt attempt to under-report number of such kids

While the Maharashtra government claims to be doing its best to enrol around 81,000 out-of-school children in the state, the National Survey on Estimation of Out-of-School Children 2014 report released by the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA) reveals that the state has nearly 1.43 lakh out-of-school children.

The report by SSA further elaborates on the number of children who were never enrolled as well as those children who were enrolled but never attended school. The report brings to the fore the attempt of the state government to under-report the out-of-school children which, according to a 2007 report, estimated out-of-school children in Maharashtra to be 17 lakh.

On Friday, education minister Vinod Tawde had revealed statistics of the number of schools having 0-20 students in the state during the Question Hour in Vidhan Sabha. He had said that in all there were 12,646 schools and these schools had around 24,692 teachers. The disclosure by Mr Tawde, according to education experts, was intended to highlight the fact that the student/teacher ratio was way below the accepted norm of one teacher for every 30 students and teachers were surplus.

Taking cognisance of the revelation by Mr Tawde, J.M. Abhyankar former chairman of the Maharashtra State Board and president of the Shiv Sena’s Shikshak Sena said that if the state had enrolled the out-of school children as per the SSA report, the question of surplus teachers would not have arisen at all.

“As per the report, there are 1,45,326 out-of-school children in the age group of 6-13 years in the state of which 71,541 have never been enrolled in any school. Of the remaining children, around 42,270 are drop outs while 31,515 children enrolled but never attended school,” said Mr Abhyankar, adding that apart from this, there were around 22,551 disabled children who were out of school and were never enrolled in any school due to the lack of special schools for them.

“Such an approach by the government indicates a negative approach and a bias against the teaching community.

The government needs to face the facts and accept the figures by the SSA and work towards getting the out-of-school children enrolled in schools,” said Mr Abhyankar.

As per the SSA report, when compared to Gujarat’s 60,941 never enrolled students, Maharashtra had a higher number. However, with only 42,270 drop outs, Maharashtra fared better than Gujarat which had 70,774 drop outs.