Karnataka: Over 2K dropouts return to schools

 Eight-year-old Umair Gulsum, a dropout, is happy to be enrolled into Class III at the Government Urdu Model Primary School at DJ Halli.

 Clad in a blue uniform with her head covered, Umair says that she aspires to become a teacher, before shying away.

 Umair has joined a list of 2,824 out-of-school children (OOSC) in the state who have been mainstreamed under the Chinnara Angala programme over the last two months.

 In Bangalore district (North, South and Rural), 548 OOSC have been brought back to regular schooling.

 There are 80 OOSC in the Government Urdu Model Primary School alone.

 Nikhar Ullaim, a Chinnara Angala teacher here, spent 15 days along with her volunteers looking for OOSC in the DJ Halli locality.

 “The hardest part was to convince parents to send children to schools.

 Most of them are migrants from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha.

 While some parents were co-operative, we had to assure the rest that their children’s schooling would not be a burden on them,” Nikhar said.

 These children have been mainstreamed at state expense and their uniforms are provided by the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), which takes care of the Chinnara Angala programme.

 What next?

According to Tushar Girinath, state project director for SSA, these kids would go through bridge courses in schools across the state, including inhouse residential programmes.

 “Out of the 68,000 kids, 12,000 are already under our wings and 7,500, who are above the age of 11, would be put in social welfare hostels.

 We have identified 405 schools to carry out courses,” he said.

 For the 405 schools, the SSA has allocated `20 crore for major repairs of infrastructure.

 “If we have to convince parents, we have to fix our infrastructure.

 The major repairs would be done in three months,” he said.

 The SSA has developed a new software to determine the status of such children and where they are located.