The district administration has identified as many as 3,207 out-of-school children including the dropouts from 52 mandals and eight municipalities in the district. The survey to identify the children those are out of school in seven mandals is underway.
The identification of the out-of-school children was taken up by the district administration as part of the ‘Mana Kosam Manam’ programme to improve eight social indicators including literacy rate and child labour.
NGOs roped inSpeaking to The Hindu , Collector T. Chiranjeevulu said that they had hired some local NGOs to conduct the survey. Stating that the survey in the remaining seven mandals would be completed in next couple of days, he said that they would admit the children in local residential schools.
“The children will be mainstreamed as per their age and performance from the next academic year,” he said. Interestingly, of the 3,207 identified children, 22 per cent were identified in eight municipalities (urban) while the remaining were from rural area.
Thipparthy, Shaligouraram and Nalgonda rural mandals have no out-of-school children according to the survey, while Chandampet mandal, with a major tribal population, has the highest out-of-school children.
Observing that the district was lagging behind in literacy rate when compared to the national and State's average, the Collector also set mandal-wise targets of making 2 lakh people literate .
The literacy rate of district stands at 65 per cent against the State and nation's 67.77 per cent and 74.04 per cent respectively. Under the Saksharatha Bharath programme, about 1 lakh people were enrolled at adult education centres across the district.
The Collector averred that they would meet the target of enrolling 2 lakh illiterate adults in adult education centres in a month.
