Chennai: The Tamil Nadu school education department has envisaged a master plan wherein the state will be accommodating school dropouts in the age group of 6 to 18 at special training centres.
These training centres are managed by the integrated school education department. The department will commence a door-to-door survey from December 19 to January 11 for tracing the school dropouts in the age group of 6 to 18 years of age.
According to a recent study by the school education department, there are around 80,000 dropouts in state schools.
The school education department will be utilising the services of block resource teacher educators, special educators, activists, physiotherapists, anganwadi teachers, school headmasters, teachers and social welfare department officials for conducting the survey.
NGOs working among the children and self-help groups will also be roped in for the conduct of the survey.
In Tamil Nadu, as per a 2017 government order, students who have not attended classes continuously for 30 working days are considered dropouts. Those with irregular school attendance history are considered as potential dropouts.
The students who are not attending classes continuously for 15 working days are also considered as potential dropouts and school education department has chalked out special training programmes for these students.
Rajashekharan R. Gounder, a teacher in Coimbatore while speaking to IANS said ," This is a good move by the state government and we will ascertain the reason for these children not going to school that range from family issues to lack of enthusiasm for studies, poverty, psychological issues and many plaguing issues."
He said that once a proper survey is conducted, a broader idea on the issue will be arrived at and after tracing these school dropouts, they would be out for special training programmes that help them to gain jobs.
School education department authorities told that this year the concentration is more on potential dropouts. The service of school headmaster and other teachers will be used for the same.
The respective district collectors will be conducting a pre survey meeting of officials of the education department on December 15 and 16 to fine tune the programme. The rural department will also be roped in to create an awareness of the survey among local neighbourhoods.
