Opepa fails to maintain award-winning Child Tracking System, no data fed since 2014

BHUBANESWAR: After getting the Prime Minister’s Award of Excellence for implementing the Child Tracking System in the state, the Odisha Primary Education Programme Authority (OPEPA) has failed to maintain the system, putting the school and mass education department in an embarrassing position.

The Child Tracking System, which was introduced in 2005, comprises an online inventory that is supposed to maintain data on the child population of the state, enrolment status, data on out-of-school children, teacher-student ratio in schools, information on teachers and other staff, as well as school infrastructure.

Data stopped being fed in the web-based portal in 2014, making it difficult for the school and mass education department to come up with plans and remedial measures for any lacuna detected. As per the data last fed into the system, more than 1.2 lakh children out of the 5 lakh-odd in the age group of 6 to 14 were out of school in 2008-09. There is no information on the same for the years that followed.

“The statistics gave us an insight into the situation on the ground. It helped us make plans to bring out-of-school children back to the mainstream. We have directed the programme authority to collect the required data and feed the same to the portal as soon as possible,” said a senior official of the school and mass education department.

OPEPA project director Bhupendra Singh Punia has asked all district education officers and district project coordinators to update data on out-of-school children in the age group of 6 to 18 and feed it into the portal by the end of January.

“Under Samagra Shiksha, out-of-school children in the age group of 6 to 18 — or students from classes 1 to XII — are to be identified for further course of action. You are requested to instruct your respective block education officers to download the list of out-of-school children and update the same,” reads Punia’s letter to the officers.

Besides failing to maintain the Child Tracking System, the OPEPA has failed to maintain its own website and the e-despatch system for which it received the National e-Governance Award in 2007. Important links such as that for the child population of state and e-sishu projects are not providing up-to-date information.