School Dropout Rate At Secondary Level Higher Than National Average In Some States

The PAB has asked these states to make an action plan to decrease the dropout rates as well as other states to continue efforts to reduce it further.

West Bengal, Gujarat, Bihar, and Tripura are among more than a dozen states where the school dropout rate at the secondary level was found higher than the national average of 14.6 %, according to official data.

The central government has requested these states to take steps to reduce the dropout rates.

This information was obtained from the meetings of the Project Approval Board (PAB) under the Ministry of Education on the Samagra Shiksha programme for 2022-23. The meetings took place between April and July with different states.

Dropout Rates

According to the sources, the government wants to achieve a 100 % Gross Enrolment Rate (GER) at the school level by 2030 as targeted in the new National Education Policy and consider dropouts as a hindrance.

According to PAB, in 2020-21, the dropout rate at the secondary level in Bihar was 21.4 %, Gujarat 23.3 %, Madhya Pradesh 23.8 %, Odisha 16.04 %, Jharkhand 16.6 %, Tripura 26 %, and Karnataka 16.6 %.

According to the documents, the estimated number of children with special needs (CWSNs) enrolled in schools in Delhi during that period was 61,051, of which 67.5 % dropped out or could not be identified.

The dropout rate at the secondary level in Andhra Pradesh was 37.6 % in 2019-20, which came down to 8.7 % in 2020-21.

Running away from education — Image Source- CareerAddict

According to the documents, in 2020-21, 12.5 % of students dropped out at the secondary level in Uttar Pradesh with an average of 11.9 % of boys and 13.2 % of girls.

In West Bengal, the secondary level is more than 15 % in 10 districts.

The PAB has asked these states to make an action plan to decrease the dropout rates as well as other states to continue efforts to reduce it further.

In 2020-21, 19 districts in Assam and 8 districts in Nagaland reported more than 30 % of the dropout rate at the secondary level. The rate in Kerala was 7.1 %, in Uttarakhand 8.41 %, and in Goa 10.17 %.