JAMMU: A one day workshop on ‘Out of School Children’ was conducted today here at Teachers’ Bhawan by Samagra Shiksha J&K in association with National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), New Delhi.
Chief Education Officers, Zonal Education Officers and representatives from Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS), Juvenile Justice Board, Child Protection Committees and Labour Commission participated in the workshop.
The core objective of the workshop was to sensitize the Educational Administrators, Planners and Teacher Educators on mainstreaming of out of school children into education system.
At the outset, Project Director, Samagra Shiksha, Dr. Arun Manhas, addressed the audience and reiterated that under Samagra Shiksha, several initiatives have been taken for identification and mainstreaming of out of school children. Dr. Manhas said that a mobile application ‘TALAASH’ has also been developed in collaboration with UNICEF-India, which helps to map the children who are not enrolled in the mainstream education.
Dr. Manhas further revealed that a child 6-14 years of age is considered out of school if he/she has never been enrolled in an elementary school or if after enrolment has remained absent from school without prior intimation for reasons of the absence for a period of 45days. Furthermore he added that 3 Non Residential Training Special Training Centres were established in the UTof J&K where in 2765 OoSC were enrolled and imparted special training by engaging 53 regular Teacher Volunteers. Out of 2765 enrolled children, 1151 children were mainstreamed so far and process of mainstreaming remaining OoSC children is going on. Also, approximately 23000 Bridge Course Books have been supplied to the various districts to run the Non Residential Special Training Centers during the year 2019-20.
Later, Prof. Sunity Sanwal took a technical session on Challenges & Strategies been faced in mainstreaming the out of school children across the country. She revealed that India being a diverse country has varied educational, social and economic dimensions which often procreate a social condition wherein parents are reluctant to enroll their wards in schools. Such conditions lead to drop in school enrolments and enhancements in number of out of school children. She told that NCERT have developed different bridge courses to provide an opportunity for these out of school children.
Besides, Mudassir Ahmad, another Resource Person also spoke and apprised the gatherings about on ground challenges been faced by educational functionaries and NGOs in identification of out of school children.
Among others present were H. R. Pukhroo, Joint Director School Education Jammu; Surrinder Kumar, Joint Director SCERT J&K; Peerzada Mushtaq Ahmad, Field Officer Samagra Shiksha; Ghulam Rasool Mir, Coordinator (Quality); Syed Fayaz Ahmad, Coordinator (Teacher Education) and other senior officers from School Education Department.
