GULBARGA: An independent survey conducted by a non-governmental organisation (NGO) on the high dropout rate among schoolchildren has revealed interesting details. According to an official estimate, Gulbarga district has the highest number of dropouts with 25,000 children out of school.

The Movement for Alternatives and Youth Awareness (MAYA), an NGO working in the field of education in eight districts of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, had conducted a survey on the problems of dropouts from schools owing to several reasons in a report presented at a function to mark the release of the Citizens Report about the Status of the Education in Gulbarga district on Thursday. It said in the nine taluks where the survey was conducted there were 3,922 dropouts from families that had migrated owing to various reasons and 373 children had not been enrolled in school.

The reasons for children dropping out from school differed from one taluk to another. In Surpur, which had the highest dropout rate of 1,492, coming under five gram panchayats, the major reason for the high dropout rate was parents involving children in agricultural activities.

The report said owing to large tracts of agriculture field coming under the irrigation network of the Upper Krishna Project in Surpur taluk, agriculture operations were taken up the entire year keeping agriculture labourers busy the whole year.

Owing to irrigation benefits, the wages of agriculture labourers were also high in Surpur and the children employed as agriculture labourers were on an average paid Rs. 50 a day. Of the total of 1,492 dropouts in Surpur taluk, 626 neither worked as agriculture labourers nor attended school. Parents of these children had no reason to offer for them not going to school, the report said.

In Chitapur taluk, 728 children had dropped out of school and 32 per cent of them were involved in cattle grazing, 26 per cent of the children, mostly girls had been forced to drop out of school by their parents to tend to infants in the family.

Migrating families left behind aged family members in the villages and children were forced to look them. Apart from this, anganwadi centres in Chitapur taluk were found not to be working up to expectations and young children who would otherwise get the basic education and care in the Anganwadi centers are deprived of this facility in Chitapur.

In Chincholi taluk, 271 children, most of them girls, were out of school according to the survey and the reasons for their dropping out was the absence of adequate primary and higher secondary schools in the district. The taluk had 155 lower primary schools, 82 higher primary schools and 21 high schools. Children after completing their primary education were forced to go to neighbouring Andhra Pradesh for their higher secondary education or abandon their education.

In Yadgir taluk of the 388 school dropouts, 44 per cent were employed for cattle grazing and 21 per cent dropped out to tend to infants.

The report said 24 per cent of the children dropped out of the school in the district owing to lack of interest in education. Another 2 per cent were involved in cattle grazing and 19 per cent were forced into manual labour. The survey said that as many as 40 per cent of children dropped out from school were involved in agriculture activities either on lands owned by their family or other land.

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