Hyderabad: Though as per the Right to Education Act, “out of school” children are kids aged between six and 13 who are not attending school, in Telangana the definition is more inclusive. According to the Telangana Intensive Household survey, children as young as two years old and even 20-year-old adults are “out of school children”.
The Intensive Household Survey (IHS), conducted last year, included questions on certain educational parameters asking if children in the household aged between six and 13 were enrolled in any school. The IHS concluded that 3lakh children in the state were not attending school.
The figure left officials shocked and wondering how the IHS had arrived at such a massive number. Even national surveys in the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh had put the number of “out of school” children at around 1.07 lakh.
But a closer look at the IHS data revealed that most of the “out of school” children, according to the IHS, were adults above 18 or children below the age of six. “There were several errors in the IHS data. How the errors crept in is difficult to say, but they seemed like data entry errors. The data shows many 20-year-old adults to be ‘out of school’ children,” sources in the TS education ministry said.
The TS government is also planning to link Aadhaar card details of school going children to prevent pilferage in schemes like the mid-day meal scheme and to keep a check on the attendance. It has been noticed that even non-existent students are shown to be on the rolls in several schools so as to inflate bills for the mid-day meal and other schemes.
