[Reader-list] Uttarakhand Records Nearly 100% Student Enrolment

Pawan Durani pawan.durani at gmail.com
Sat Apr 3 12:24:45 IST 2010


Uttarakhand has achieved nearly 100 per cent enrolment of students in
schools this year and the drop out percentage has come down to mere
0.31 per cent from 15 per cent in 2000-01.

Of the 18.06 lakh children in the age group of 6-14 years in the
state, 17.97 lakh (99.50%) have been enrolled in various schools,
Uttarakhand Government officials said here.

"The drop out percentage has come down from 15 per cent as per
2000-2001 census to 0.31 per cent at present," they said. In the last
three years, 613 new schools and 594 upper primary schools have been
set up under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) in the hill state, the
officials said.

The government has been implementing several innovative schemes like
`Sapno ki Udan', `Pahal' and `Muskan' under the Centre's flagship
programme to improve the quality and reach of education in the State.

The salient features of `Sapno ki Udan' include organising `Mobile
Schools' to reach out to the children and their parents, to identify
and mainstream `Out-of-School' children, hosting community and
educational fairs and conducting regular health camps, Radhika Jha,
the State Project Director of SSA, told a visiting team of
journalists.

"The Mobile Schools/Multi Purpose Vehicle are equipped with projector,
computer library, learning material and other necessary tools. These
vehicles are used to provide mobile schooling as well as to extend
awareness and motivational campaigns among the masses," she said.
(more)

"SSA helped our school in a big way. All the children of our school
belong to BPL families. We did not have basic infrastructure earlier.
Now we have chairs, benches and other basic things," Deepa Semwal,
in-charge Head Mistress of the Primary School at a slum in Dehradun,
said.

"Health camps are also conducted at our school. We also tell the
children and their parents about the need to maintain good hygiene at
home," she said.

`Pahal' is an initiative in PPP (public private partnership) mode for
providing school education to `never- enrolled' and drop-out children
in the age-group of 6-14 years belonging to vulnerable sections like
rag-pickers, beggars and scavengers.

The programme has benefited 763 children in Udham Singh Nagar,
Nainital and Haridwar districts, officials said.

`Muskaan' is another successful programme that aims at ensuring
education of children of migrant labourers from states like UP, Bihar,
Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. The programme, that had won appreciation
from the Centre, was initially implemented in Nainital under SSA.

http://news.outlookindia.com/item.aspx?678523

A certificate mentioning the ability of the student is given when the
parents migrate to another place so that the student can be admitted
to a school there.

As many as 3,191 children, studying at 39 centres in Nainital, Udham
Singh Nagar, Haridwar and Dehradun, are benefiting from the `Muskan'
programme, the officials said.

The schools in Uttarakhand have school management committees and the
members of these panels meet the parents, generally underprivileged
sections of the society, and convince them to send their children to
the school.

"The parents of the children are extremely poor. They are involved in
things like rag-picking. We tell them to send the children to school.
We follow up with the parents to see that their children attend
classes regularly," Brij Mohan Sharma, president of the management
committee of a primary school at Ajabpur in the state capital said.

As many as 17,783 women belonging to BPL families have been appointed
as `Bhojan Mata' (women who prepare food) under the mid-day meal
scheme.

The scheme, under which free lunch is provided to students on all
working days, was also instrumental in increasing the enrolment in the
primary schools, the officials added.


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