Talaash of ‘Out Of School Children’
‘Education is the powerful weapon through which we can change the world’- Nelson Mandela
By: Gh. Hassan Bhat
Education is the impeccable weapon through which we can understand the laws of nature and natural phenomena in a comprehensive manner. Education has changed the fate of civilizations over the centuries as it ended the Dark Ages which had engulfed mankind for thousands of years. It brought remarkable changes in every sphere of life.
But major portion of our society, cutting across borders, still maintains pessimistic view about the modern education. Alone in India about 98 lakh children are out of school comprising of general categories, out of school children and other dropouts. In JK about 28 thousand children are belonging to this category.
These children are those who have never attended school due to umpteen reasons like poverty, inaccessibility of educational institutions, illness, different disabilities, working at domestic level and several other issues. Covid-19 further makes the situation more alarming.
Out of School Children are mainly employed as child labors working in very arduous tasks across the country. Who knows what is happening with them? Under what circumstances they might be living, what they think about education andif they seriously wish to get education. They too are our kith and kin and our future. Who knows what talent remains unexplored.
To track and identify this lot, Dept of Education has taken a decisive step to enroll and educate the out of school children in the form of “TALAASH SURVEY”. In this regard a Talaash App has been developed in collaboration with UNICEF and J&K Association of Social Workers (JKASW) with the main objective to identify and mainstreaming these children.
In this regard Education dept has trained Teachers, HOIs, ZRPs, CRCs, DRGs etc both as Surveyors and Planners to locate such children by door to door digital survey. Under this not only identification process shall be held but efforts are also being taken to bring back and mainstream the Out of School Children. This survey shall also enumerate and keep track of these children.
In our constitution under Article 21-A and RTE (2009) free and compulsory education is mandated to all children in the age group of 6 to 14 as their fundamental right. Enrollment drives have already done a great job to mainstream the said OSC and Dropout lot into school fold. Now the onus is on the govt, edu. dept and especially trained teachers working down the line to undertake serious measures to bring all OSC’s back to school curriculum. This is not an easy task.
These children are actually excluded from teaching learning process. This is the poorest section that needs to be guided. They need special attention, love and sympathy.
The writer is a Govt Teacher (Resource Person).
