Program to enroll dropouts in school falling short of goals

Rafeikh greases vehicles at his spot by a petrol station on Mysore Road instead of attending school.

By Shraddha Choudhury

BANGALORE (Jan. 19)—H.V. Kemparaju, project officer of the Chinnara Angala Program, which aims to bring out-of-school children back to school, is proud of the good it has done.

“Out of the 39,841 students recognized as out-of-school children by the census, the program took in approximately 28,000 [students] this year,” he said.

Wiping grease from his hands with a rag beside a petrol station on Mysore Road, 14-year-old Rafeikh, said with a smile on his face, “I don’t get to go to school in the mornings.”

Every morning, while children around his slum get ready to go to school, Rafeikh heads to the petrol station with a grease pump in hand. He skips school every morning as he helps his father grease vehicles that stop along the highway.

“Abba (father) works on another part of the highway in the morning,” Rafeikh said. “When he comes to this place in the afternoon, I then go to school if it isn’t too late.”

The Chinnara Angala Program includes those children who were never enrolled in a school as well as those who dropped out. This scheme falls under the Right to Education Act and therefore, it only includes dropouts in the 6-14 age group.

“We conduct a census every year either in December or January where we try to find the number of students who dropped out,” Kemparaju said.  “Sometimes, there is a long gap between the children dropping out and then being brought back to school, so this program provides special training for three to 12 months where the basics are taught.”

This census clearly does not include children who wish to be regular students, but cannot due to circumstances, such as Rafeikh’s.

Rafeikh has been lending a helping hand to his family’s sole source of income since the age of 12. Missing out on the first half of school since then leaves a major hole in his education.

Like every other program, the Chinnara Angala too has its own loopholes, being unable to keep a check on whether the students are regular or not, being one of them.

Tushar Girinath, state project director and commissioner of the Public Instruction Department of Karnataka said, “The program is surely helping, but it needs improvements like every other such program.”

He believes that they “rush” through the program very fast and do not assess the students’ capabilities thoroughly during the special training that they provide before the children are enrolled back in school.

Also, once this enrollment is done, the state department has no system of keeping track of whether or not the students are regular at the schools they have been enrolled in.

“It’s the responsibility of the headmasters of the schools to ensure whether they stay in school or not as they are directly in touch with the students,” Kemparaju said. “They send monthly reports to the officers in charge.”

Lying under a truck, Rafeikh says that there have been many instances when his father has not been able to make it to his spot outside the HP petrol station. But he doesn’t seem concerned about it.

“It does not make a difference whether I go or not as I miss most of it in the morning anyway,” he said.

Even though the government is making an effort to improve the state of education in the country with schemes such as the Chinnara Angala, this too falls short of achieving its ultimate goal—like many others.