Image Courtesy : www.facebook.com/people/Government-Senior-Secondary-School-Nurpur-Jalandhar/100064139978366/

According to the official data, Gujarat, Karnataka, Punjab, Bihar, and Assam are among seven Indian states where the school dropout rate at the secondary level was extremely higher than the national norm of 12.6% in 2021-2022. This official data was collected from the minutes of the Project Approval Board (PAB) meetings conducted under the Ministry of Education in order to discuss the enactment of the "Samagra Shiksha" programme for 2023-2024.

The meetings with states and union territories were held between March and May this year. According to the officials, the government considers dropout a hindrance to gaining the new National Education Policy's aim of a 100% Gross Enrolment Rate (GER) at the school level by 2030. The elements of the Project Approval Board meeting minutes reveal that the dropout rate at the secondary level in the academic year 2021–2022 was 21.7% in Meghalaya, 20.46% in Bihar, 20.3% in Assam, 17.85% in Gujarat, 17.2% in Punjab, 16.7% in Andhra Pradesh, and 14.6% in Karnataka.

In West Bengal, though the school dropout rate has enhanced substantially from the academic year 2020-2021 to 2021-2022, especially at the elementary level, it requires to resume performing sufficient efforts to decrease the dropout rate and improve the retention rate at the secondary level, it was reported in one of the minutes. There are a lot of dropout children in the Union Territory of Delhi. One of the documents stated that details of the schoolchildren mainstreamed will be uploaded on the PRABANDH portal.

The minutes did not contain the school dropout rate figures for the West Bengal state and the national capital. Data disclosed that in Madhya Pradesh, the school dropout rate at the secondary level has fallen from 23.8% in the academic session 2020-2021 to 10.1% in 2021-2022. Madhya Pradesh directs a particular enrolment drive annually with a concentrating household survey with the help of a mobile app. Data displayed that in Maharashtra, the annual average school dropout rate at the secondary level had decreased from the academic session 11.2% in 2020-2021 to 10.7% in 2021-2022.

The collected data stated that, however, the school dropout rate in five districts of Madhya Pradesh is 15% and above. In Uttar Pradesh (UP), the annual average dropout rate is "extremely high" in the sections of Basti (23.3%), Budaun (19.1%), Etawah (16.9%), Ghazipur (16.6%), Etah (16.2%), Mahoba (15.6%), Hardoi (15.6%) and Azamgarh (15%).

The documents showed that the school dropout ratio in Rajasthan is continuously decreasing. But the dropout rate amongst scheduled tribes (9%) and Muslim (18%) children is still "extremely high" at the secondary level. United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) conducted a survey the previous year that expresses that in India, 33% of girls drop out of school because of domestic work. In many places that after quitting school, children began working as laborers with their families or cleaning people's homes.