Madrasa, gompas, vedic school students may be termed ‘out-of-school-children’

Students studying in unrecognised schools and madrasas and vedic pathshalas may soon be termed “out-of-school-children”, a government panel has suggested.

The panel made the recommendation while suggesting mapping of all unrecognised institutions during a survey to identify out-of-school children.

“These institutions may and may not provide regular mainstream education. Children attending all such institutions (unrecognised schools) are to be treated as out of school, even if they provide regular education. All these unrecognised institutions such as unrecognised schools, unrecognized madrasa, vedic pathshalas, gompas and other form of non-formal education centres must be mapped and children enrolled therein are counted as out-of-school children,” the panel said in its report.

The panel was formed to devise pathways for re-engaging out-of-school children headed by HRD minister of state (school education) Upendra Kushwaha. The recommendations of the panel will be taken up by the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) when it meets on Monday. The meeting will be chaired by human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar. The committee has also suggested that there is a need to have a standardised definition of out-of-school children. “This definition needs should be uniform and be used by all data sources of the country”.

To ensure students do not drop out of schools, the committee has also recommended that children from the marginalised sections need to be incentivised for their attendance in schools.

The report points out that the government of Haryana has a system in place under which Rs 1 per day per child is provided to children of nomadic tribes for their attendance in schools. Similarly, West Bengal government gives an annual scholarship of Rs 500.

The panel suggested that government should work towards developing an Aadhaar-linked child tracking system under which information about students’ age and educational status should be linked with their unique identity numbers.