Chennai Corporation forms special team to trace school dropouts

CHENNAI: The Chennai Corporation has formed a special team of teachers, in all its 281 schools, to identify dropouts, from LKG to class 12 and take necessary measures to boost admissions for upcoming academic year.

Corporation Commissioner G Prakash said, “Each school will have a team of teachers headed by the headmasters (HMs) and each teacher will have to cover  at least 50 families and find out why children dropped out.” “The teachers must record the reasons and basic details and submit it to the HMs.

After this, the HMs will have to take the measures to admit the child back to school,’’ he added. Prakash said that each teacher can seek the help of Self Help Groups to identify families. “This is a citywide effort by GCC,’’ he said.

 According to data, about 83,000 students are studying in Chennai Corporation schools. Among them, in academic year 2019-20,  at least 300 students from various classes have dropped out, say officials. 

“Eviction was a major reason why many students did not come back to schools. Now, there’s a concern that lockdown could lead to more people staying away from schools as not all students attend online classes,’’ an official with the civic body’s education department said. Earlier, the civic body  had distributed free smartphones for online classes to  higher secondary students.