Bihar edu dept disenroll over 1 lakh students for ‘missing school’

The Bihar education department’s tough posturing to improve attendance of students in schools, which was hitherto conveniently ignored, has led to the disenrollment of over one lakh students remaining consistently absent and not reporting to schools despite their admission, said an official aware of the matter.

The number of missing students could rise further, as it had happened over a decade ago, as the drive would continue to get the right picture for improving facilities and attendance in schools and growing apprehension that many of the habitually absent ones might be enrolled elsewhere or studying in private schools, added the official.

The decision to remove names of students remaining absent for long periods was taken by the order of additional chief secretary (education) KK Pathak, who has himself been inspecting schools, sending teams across the state and monitoring the presence of students and teachers on a daily basis.

During an inspection, Pathak had suggested the teachers and school administration striking off the names of students not reporting consistently.

“He has been particular about the attendance of students and directed the removal of names from the registers if they did not report consistently for more than three days without any valid reason and remained unresponsive for a fortnight despite reminders. That order is being followed. If at any later stage, the students will report, they will have to give an affidavit stating they will be regular for re-admission. Some students may have enrolled to avail of direct benefit transfer (DBT) and are studying elsewhere,” said the education department’s public relations officer Amit Kumar.

This is, however, not the first time it has happened in Bihar. In 2011-12, rampant fake enrolments in Bihar schools surfaced during the implementation of the health guarantee scheme for all students and later the ‘operation register clean’ pointed to an astronomical number of missing students.

The department had then said that the preliminary findings of ‘operation register clean’ had pointed to inflated admissions to the tune of around 20 lakh, though not many details were shared later on.

The department officials later said that many names might have been deleted without ascertaining actual reasons for the absence of students and the issue was closed, though the problem apparently remained unchecked.

The reasons for inflated admissions were attributed to the massive exercise of bringing all out-of-school children to schools since 2006 through the government’s ‘Sankalp’ programme, in which the schools fudged admissions in connivance with local officials to improve their record and it confounded over the years.

A senior official of the department said that Pathak’s insistence on better attendance in schools and close monitoring could unravel the real enrolment figures and also save the exchequer by saving a lot of money going to undeserving and fake students through DBT.

“The government gives a lot of incentives for improving education, but it cannot be allowed to become a source of scam. It is public money and meant for improvement in schools helping the needy. The drive will separate the wheat from the chaff,” added the official.

He said that enrolment was the yardstick on which the entire educational planning in the state was done – be it the requirement of teachers, schools, classrooms or distribution of funds for mid-day meals (MDM), bicycles, books, dresses etc. – and if the figures would go wrong, it would be difficult to achieve the desired objective.

“The focus is on improving attendance and it has been observed that despite improvement over the last three months, the desired outcome is not reflecting. This led to apprehension if the same students are enrolled in two or more schools or are studying elsewhere, as was detected in 2011-12 by state quality mission during random checks in schools with consistently poor attendance but high enrolment,” added the official.