Wanted studied action

The Right to Education Act 2009 came into force on April 1 this year, making education a fundamental right for every child between the age of 6 and 14.

The law, coming after 63 years of Independence, also puts the onus of free and compulsory education on the government.

Studies have shown that dropout rates peak when students are in classes III to V and that 50 per cent boys and 58 per cent girls do not complete school.

Add to that the fact that 50 per cent girls never enroll in schools and the situation becomes grim.

So, what are the prime reasons for children staying away from school? Inaccessibility

One reason why students in rural areas discontinue schooling is inaccessibility.

Either the school is 2-3 km away from the village with no bus access, forcing children to walk, or the atmosphere is vitiated because of caste and social prejudices.

Prof Shanmugaveladuyam of the department of social work, Loyola College, said: “In rural areas inaccessibility is still a major issue. And in some places, like the Coimbatore– Erode belt, where the caste factor is still dominant, social discrimination is a major factor that forces children to dropout of school.” Take Thavukadu village in Ramanathapuram district. As there is no bus connectivity, children are forced to walk 4 km each day to reach the nearest high school at Puduvalanthai Panchayat HQ. This is a village of traditional toddy tappers. After the trade was banned, the villagers shifted to mat weaving.

Packiam (39), a mat weaver, and her husband Kandan (40) have three children who dropped out of school.

Their daughter Viji (16) dropped out after Class VI because she found it too tiring to walk to school under the hot sun. Besides it was not safe for a girl to trudge the distance. Ditto brother Ravi (15). He is now working at a petty shop in Chennai. Sibling Arunkumar (10) too dropped out of school recently.

According to Viji, “Had there been a bus connection, I would have continued my studies. I always wanted to study, but the school is nowhere near our village.” Her mother said: “We very much want our children to go to school despite poverty. At least the next generation shouldn’t suffer like us. But they are not able to walk such long distances, and there is no bus facility.” Nagavijay (12), a neighbour of Viji, who too dropped out, said: “I am prepared to resume schooling if a bus connection is provided. I want to become a police when I grow up.” In his village there are 50 children of school going age. At present, just 15 of them go to school; the rest dropped out after a few years.

Female dropouts generally do some cooking, wash clothes and baby-sit the younger sibilings. Some of them take jobs in petty shops or get into unorganised labour.

A study by Rural Workers Development Society (RWDS), an NGO, in 27 villages in Kadaladi block in Ramnad district, revealed that 181 children had dropped out in the past year due to inaccessibility to school. Gopal of RWDS said: “In Ramnad district, schools are mostly located in the panchayat headquarters. There are about 350 remote villages that 2-3 km away from the headquarters and are not connected by bus.”

Lack of motivation

Call it peer pressure or lack of motivation to study, or a need to earn early in life, many children have reportedly said that they find academics boring and that teachers add to the monotony. Besides, in the slums in towns and their peripheries, there is always the lure of job that takes children out of classrooms.

Balaji Sampath, director, AidIndia who works in the field of school education, said: “In cities, lots of children dropout of school by choice, which I feel is due to the lack of quality education. Day after day, a child goes to school, without learning to read or write and then, after a point of time, doesn’t want to continue in school. According to the Annual State of Education Report 2010, a study conducted by Pratham, an NGO, 53 per cent of children in Class V in Tamil Nadu cannot do two-digit subtraction. The government needs to have a focus on the learning outcome.” Zahir (12) from Vilampur village in Kancheepuram district, dropped out after Class III because he felt that he was not learning anything. He wants to become a mechanic at a garage, but his parents want him to go to school.

At present, he is doing neither. He plays all day, hoping to grow up fast and become a mechanic one day.

Zahir is not alone in Vilampur, where many boys like him want to start earning. Zahir said: “When I was going to Jangudevan kuppam panchayat school, which is 1.5 km away from my village, my teachers asked us to do menial work like cleaning the campus and filling the water pots. We never learnt anything as they would write something on the board and ask us to copy it. If I didn’t understand the subject they would not teach me again.” Zahir’s mother Mumtaz (33) is crestfallen: “I am worried about the future of the boy. He cannot read or write even his name. My husband and I earn enough to keep the children in school. But they are not interested.” In fact siblings Waza Ali (14) and Ifran (8) too have discontinued studies.

Zahir’s mother has an interesting story: “Zahir never went to school after Class III, but got a card from the school saying he had passed Class VIII.” Mahendran from the District Federation of Dalit Liberation, an NGO, said: “The system followed in government schools to promote all students till Class VIII has only led to teachers not teaching and the students not studying. The fallout: many students in Class IX struggle because of a weak foundation.

They end up as dropouts.”

Migrant parents

Migration to cities from distant villages for labour too that keeps children out of school.

When impoverished villagers migrate to cities for livelihood, their children remain at home.

They dropout of schools as they move with their parents and eventually enter the labour market.

Data from various sources put the number of inter-State and intra-State migrant workers close to 20 lakh in Tamil Nadu. P Krishnamoorthy of Child Rights and You (CRY), said: “The loss of livelihood and lack of productive resources and remunerative employment opportunities in the rural areas are pushing families, at times entire villages, into distress and seasonal migration. This movement deprives children of educational opportunities. I believe labour migration is closely correlated to development.” Roja (13) was in Class V when she was in her village, Thirunavallur in Villupuram district, three years ago. After her parents migrated to work in brick kilns at Thiruvallur district, she is at home looking after her sibilings and helping her family at work. Both her brothers, Prakash (10) and Ajith (8), too are dropouts.

This family of landless labourers does seasonal migration for eight months in a year for a lumpsum payment of Rs 30,000. Roja’s mother Jayanthi (30) said: “My children were going to school before we came here to work.

The school here is two km away from our worksite. We are not familiar with this new place, and do not feel it safe to send out daughter to school here. Besides, since they don’t go to school for the period we stay here, when we go back to our village, the kids are asked to join the same class. How many years a child can be in the same class? So now they don’t go to school anymore.” Prakash (10) said, “Nobody in this brick kiln goes to school. In my village I liked going to school.” Roja said, “I like to study, but there is no school close by here.” She and her brothers help their parents in meeting the daily quota of manufacturing 1,000 bricks.

Sumithra of Pasumai Trust, an NGO, said: “Most of the migrant parents are illiterate. They don’t take the trouble of enquiring and approaching schools in the vicinity for admitting their wards. Even if they do, the local school asks for transfer certificate from the previous school, which most of them do not have.” Poverty

Poverty is still a reason for a child dropping out of school in many drought-hit districts. Though more prevalent in rural areas, urban India is no exemption. When the size of the family grows but the income does not, children are forced to share the burden of economic hardship by taking up jobs.

According to Prabhakaran, a child rights activist: “It is the livelihood opportunities and the family income that decides if a child remains in school. Education as a right should not be looked in isolation, without addressing the other two. Else, it will not be possible to ensure that a child will remain in school.” “Most of the daily wage earners do not have the luxury of care takers. It is the older children who look after the young. When old enough, as the older child’s income really matters to the family, eventually the child drops out.” Like in the case of Mayilvazhanan (14), who was a good student in Kannirajapuram panchayat school in Ramnad district. He was in Class IX last year. Now he has been sent to work in soft drink company in Coimbatore for a lump sum amount.

His mother Vellamma (38) said, “Penury forced us to sent him to work. We were toddy tappers. After the ban on tapping, we are only doing jaggery.

We have work only for six months in a year. To survive the rest of the months, we take advance money from the trader, and work to pay off the money.” Velamma and her husband Sakthivel (40) have three other younger children who continue to go to school. “We want all our children to complete schooling. But if conditions turn bad, we will have no option but to send them to work,” said Sakthivel.