MUMBAI: Over 1,900 children in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) were found to have dropped out of formal education in the two years of pandemic. Migration and financial difficulties had taken away these children’s right to education.
The ‘Mission Zero Dropout’ drive undertaken by the state school education department from July 5-20 also identified 808 children in the 3-18 age group in the metropolitan region who have never been to school. A state survey had found over 25,000 children who had either dropped out of school last year or not been to one during the pandemic.
The 2,757 children, including 1,349 girls, in the MMR are being enrolled in schools. Of the 1,949 students who dropped out of schools during the pandemic, the majority (966) are girls. Among children who have not been to a school, maximum (425) were boys.
Teachers, along with NGOs visited public places, construction sites, bus stands and railway stations to look for children not attending schools in the academic year 2022-23 when all classes have returned offline.
Maximum number of drop-outs (810) and children not been to school (196) was found in Palghar district.
In Mumbai, 749 school dropouts were identified and 174 children were found to have never seen a school. The western suburbs had the maximum number of drop-outs (269), followed by south Mumbai (237)
At least 47 of the children are those with special needs, 10 are from Mumbai and 25 from Palghar.
A total of 12 children were found to be working as labourers, most of them in Palghar.
State officials said that families had migrated to states like Karnataka and Gujarat. Large-scale inter-state migration had also taken place during the pandemic .
