Tripura Government has come up with an innovative scheme to encourage dropout students to re-enroll.
State Education Minister Ratan Lal Nath said in Agartala on Friday, under the ‘Vidyalaya Chalo Abhiyan’, the Tripura government introduced a new scheme – ‘Earn With Learn’.
Speaking to the media in Secretariat, Nath said as per the reports received from schools, dropout of around 8,850 school students in 6-14 years age groups was recorded following the Covid pandemic.
The pandemic affected the school children and owing to restrictions during the pandemic, the ‘Vidyalaya Chalo Abhiyan’ could not be implemented.
“The new scheme aims at encouraging the dropout students to go back to school,” Nath told the reporters.
Detailing the implementation of the scheme, the Education minister said, “A door-to-door survey will be carried out across the state to implement the scheme. The third-year college students who are interested to voluntarily take part in the survey may register their names in their respective colleges. For identification of dropout students and re-admission in school, the state government will offer an honorarium of Rs. 500 per admission,” Nath said, adding that around 10,000 volunteers would be required to complete the survey.
The college students would be assisted by Anganwadi and ASHA workers. In case of engagement of teachers in the survey, honorarium of Rs. 200 would be provided, he added.
The Education minister also highlighted several other initiatives of the State Government and said that school bags would be provided to all students from pre-primary to Class-III.
“There are 1,51,719 students in pre-primary to Class-III. The expenditure for providing school bags to them will stand Rs. 7,58,59,500,” Nath said.
According to the Education minister, the state government is already providing free textbooks to Class-I to VIII students at an expenditure of Rs. 13.36 crore.
Giving more details, Nath said the state government is providing Rs. 600 to SC, ST and BPL category students (boys) and all girl students from Class I to VIII for school uniform and the annual expenditure of the government for this purpose is Rs. 9.5 crore.
Meanwhile, as part of the implementation of National Education Policy (NEP), the state government has taken up a pilot project at Aspirational district – Dhalai where along with the mid-day-meal, the students of Class- I to VIII would be provided additional foods like boiled egg, fruits, milk etc.. He also said, now photos of school teachers would be displayed in the classrooms.
