Delhi Govt to Track Out of School Kids, Will Visit Households to Identify Students

To mend the crippling state of education in India after the blows of COVID-19, the All India Parents Association (AIPA), in collaboration with the guest teachers of government schools in Delhi, has started a campaign to increase the overall Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) — the number of students enrolled in primary and secondary levels of education.

AIPA and the guest teachers of Delhi’s government schools will track the yet-to-be-enrolled and drop-out students of Delhi and assist them in ways that they can start or continue with their education. To successfully track these students, AIPA and the guest teachers have formed teams that plan to visit every household to identify such students.

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Due to the pandemic, the dropout rate in the country shot up as many parents were not able to afford the expense of education. In addition, many students had not been enrolled in the schooling system to date.

Govind Singh, president of the Dilli Atithi Shikshak Sangh (DASS), in an interview with a leading news daily, said that the campaign is equally supported by regular teachers. In addition, domestic help is also being sought to identify kids who are no longer a part of the schooling system or are yet to enroll. “All the teachers are working in this direction 24×7,” he said.

“There are about 2 lakh disabled children in Delhi, and many of them are out of the schooling system. During COVID, about 20-25 percent of students have dropped out of government school. We intend to increase the Gross Enrolment Ratio in all government schools of the city through this campaign,” Ashok Agarwal, national president, AIPA told the news daily.

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Ashok also revealed that in one of their researches, they found that an MCD school in Karol Bagh saw an efflux of roughly 30 percent of students who went with their parents, who were migrant labourers, and never came back after COVID-19 restrictions eased up.

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