New Delhi: The entire nation is celebrating over the Right to Education (RTE), which came into effect from April 1, 2010. However, there is another major issue to be emphasized on i.e. the dropout rate. Both are interweave, the dropout rate is expected to lower down with RTE. RTE Act covers children in the 6 to 14 years age group precisely for these classes in school, so, the dropouts need to be the biggest focus of the implementation mechanism being set up.
With the implementation of RTE, the spotlight till now has been on expanding the infrastructure, appointing teachers, ensuring that schools are at walkable distances, and so on. In fact, all this are very essential, however, the biggest problem facing the schooling system is that over 50% of children who join up in Class I drop out by Class VIII. It is not about children who never attended school - those are a separate and fast diminishing category.
Therefore, in order to address the huge problem of dropouts, policy makers need to look at the factors that lead children to leave school at various stages. Surveys by the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO), which asked boys and girls why they dropped out from school, got some astonishing answers.
About 42% of girls said that they were told by their parents to look after the housework and 14% said that their elders thought that more education was unnecessary for them. In the case of boys, these two reasons were minor, given by only 11% of them. Their main reason for dropping out, given by 68%, was to supplement the family income.
If Right to Education is not to remain merely a paper exercise, policy makers need to penetrate deep into the broader social and political architecture of our society at the grassroots.
