BHUBANESWAR: With around 30 per cent students not turning up for classes, the School and Mass Education department has asked collectors to devise location specific strategy to check dropouts.
School and Mass Education Minister Samir Ranjan Dash on Saturday said PRI and SHG members will be involved in the exercise to improve the enrollment and attendance, while secretary Bishnupada Sethi asked district administrations to conduct a micro-level survey at school level to list out the students who are not coming to schools and find out the reasons for the same.
The SME secretary said that following analysis of the daily attendance figure provided by the District Education Officers, it was found that 70 per cent students are attending the classes.
The detail analysis also revealed that the attendance in Class-I to Class-V in Malkangiri, Boudh, Gajapati, Sambalpur, Nuapada was less than the State average. Similarly, the attendance for Class-VI to Class-VIII in Malkanagiri, Boudh, Sambalpur and Nuapada was also less than the State average.
At secondary level too, the performance of districts such as Gajapati, Balangir, Bargarh, Sonepur, Nuapada, Cuttack, Khurda, Koraput, Ganjam, Boudh, Malkanagiri, Keonjhar and Sambalpur has remained less than the State average.
The overall attendance in Higher Secondary classes has also been abysmally low in Gajapati, Sonepur, Baragarh, Kandhamal, Nuapada, the study found. Besides, the department observed that many students passing out from Class VIII are not taking readmission in Class IX.
Sethi said thorough analysis has to be made to know the whereabouts of the absentee students. "It may so happen that these students who are not attending the offline classes might have dropped out or moved out along with their parents or lost interest in academic activities due to non-continuance of the teaching schedule during the pandemic. There could also be other reasons that need analysis," he said.
Besides, he said special care is required to get the Class VIII students admitted at Secondary level in the nearby schools. "Location specific strategy needs to be done to bring back the students to the classroom," Sethi said.
The department has proposed that junior teachers may be sent to the houses of the absentee students to know the reason of their absence from schools.