Maharashtra launches campaign to bring back school dropouts

The School Education Department of Maharashtra has launched the “Mission Zero Dropout” campaign, which aims to bring back all the children who have dropped out of school due to various reasons in the mainstream of education.

The campaign covers children in the age group of 3-18 years, including children with special needs. For the first time, the department has sought participation from various sections of the government - women and child development, social welfare and tribal and minority departments in the campaign.

While tweeting about this initiative, State School Education Minister Barsa Gaikwad said, “In order to uphold the right of every child to education, we all should strive for zero tolerance against school dropouts. Our school education department wants to ensure that no child is deprived of education. so we bring them back to school.

According to data compiled by the state's school education department, there were a total of 25,204 children who were out of school last year. Of these, 7,806 children (4,076 boys and 3,730 girls) have never attended any school, while 17,397 (9,008 boys and 8,389 girls) have seen irregular attendance during the pandemic.

 The RTE quota, on the other hand, is 25 percent of the total seats available for the academic session 2021-22. The revised schedule for the admission process is expected to be released by this week. At the same time, this year only one lottery process will be conducted for admission under RTE quota. After the lottery process is over, the waiting list will be issued according to the vacant seats in the schools across the state.