The definition of a drop-out is any child that does not attend school continuously for 60 days.

It is school time again. But Manikanta, an impish 10-year-old truant from school in Shanthinagar, has yet again successfully dodged the education department’s (ED) efforts to enroll him in the Chinnara Angala bridge course for drop-outs during the summer vacation. What has been the response of the ED to Manikanta’s battle of wits with it? Helplessness.

Anjula, 11 years, has also escaped the Chinnara Angala net as she is an ersatz mother to her three younger siblings, while her mother goes to work. What has been the ED’s response to the multiple handicaps preventing Anjula from attending school? Nonchalance.

Sumangala, a 13-year-old, is being sent to work as a domestic maid by her father Somanna (name changed) since he does not believe in educating girls. Teachers lament, “What can we do? The family depends on her earnings, so how can we ask them not to send her to work?”

ED officials have all been notified as inspectors under the Child Labour Act. What has been the ED’s response to Sumangala working in an occupation (domestic work) banned as ‘hazardous’ under the Act? Inaction.

The ED does not implement its own Education Act, which says that any employer employing children during school working hours should be penalised. The ED doesn’t seem to be aware of the Children’s Helpline run by the police to rescue child labourers like Sumangala. The ED appears to be ignorant of the Juvenile Justice Act, implemented by the Women and Child Department, under which Child Welfare Committees (CWC) have been set up to enquire into violations of child rights, including child labour. A CWC could counsel parents of Manikanta, Anjula and Sumangala or send the children to a free government hostel, where they would also receive education. Or the CWCs could require the social welfare or any other department to provide any necessary assistance to the families or the communities of these children.

The ED appears to be unaware of the state’s Action Plan on Child Labour. Under this plan, rather than plead helplessness, the ED could itself have filed a case or asked the labour department to prosecute Sumangala’s employers and recovered a penalty of Rs 20,000 from them, to be used for her education. What’s more, this would be much more than what she would ever earn by working throughout her childhood.

The ED does none of the above. It has not devised a protocol — which tells its officials exactly what to do, apart from persuasion, to bring out-of-school children to school. It merely puts the onus to do this on hapless teachers like Anitha who have nothing more to work with than their own compassion and empathy for the children.
Equally bad is the fact that teachers are given this task, when their task is only to teach. The definition of the education department for a drop-out is “any child that does not attend school continuously for 60 days”. Does that mean the department need not do anything about an absentee child for 60 days or until the next Chinnara Angala?

Compare this with the rules of a school in a country we all love to ape in so many other ways: illegal absences of children beyond the first three days “are subject to referral to a magistrate for action” and also shall be referred “to the district attendance officer for investigation and on-going follow-up”. What is clear is that there is a definite procedure which however does not involve teachers!

The absence of a specified procedure is the reason why almost 50 per cent of children fail to complete eight years of compulsory education. A World Bank study states that no child from the lowest population quintile ever reaches the tertiary level of education! And yet, we worry more about tertiary education to a few from the creamy layers.

While we provide huge subsidies from tax-payers’ money to them, we are unwilling to provide meaningful amounts as scholarships/conditional cash transfers for compulsory school attendance to the Anjulas and Sumangalas at the elementary level. So much for the state’s duty to ensure the Fundamental Right of elementary education of children between 6-14 years! 

Copyright 2007, The Printers (Mysore) Private Ltd.,