Despite SSA, 57,000 children miss school

Despite SSA, 57,000 children miss school

From our Correspondent

JORHAT, May 16: Though Parliament makes education one of the fundamental rights, there are many who fail to realize significance of education. Lakhs of people are there in the State who, due to reasons like poverty or child labour, fail to appreciate the greater needs of primary education for their children. This apart, there are thousands of children in the State who are engaged as domestic helps with well-off families. The so-called upper strata of the society deliberately snatch the childhood and primary education of these poor children. As a result, the entire efforts of the government for primary education in the age group of 6-14 have become worthless over the years.

In line with other parts of the country, the Central government had introduced the Sarba Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) in Assam way back in 2001 focusing on primary education for all children in the age group of 6-14. But, even after of nine years of launching the SSA programme and implementing various projects in the last decade, there are, according to District Information School Education (DISE) record 2009-10, as many as 59 thousand children still out-of-school in the State. As per the record with Government department, the total number of enrolled children in schools is 57.18 lakh.