Samagra Shiksha, Jammu and Kashmir, and National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) on March 4 conducted a workshop on ‘Out of School Children' at Teachers' Bhawan in Jammu. The objective of the workshop was to sensitise the educational administrators, planners and teacher educators on mainstreaming out of school children into the education system, an official statement said.
Jammu And Kashmir Samagra Shiksha project director Dr Arun Manhas informed the audience that under Samagra Shiksha, several initiatives have been taken for identification and mainstreaming of out of school children.
Dr Manhas informed three non residential special training centres have been established in the Union Territory where 2,765 out of school children are enrolled. Fifty three teacher volunteers are imparting special training to these children.
Out of 2,765 enrolled children, 1,151 have been mainstreamed so far and the process of mainstreaming the remaining children is going on.
Prof Sunity Sanwal, faculty member, Department of Elementary Education, NCERT, said the council has developed different bridge courses for these out of school children.
Approximately 23,000 bridge course books have been supplied to various districts to run the non residential special training centers during 2019-20, Dr Manhas said.
Dr Manhas said a child under 6-14 years age group is considered out of school if he or she has never been enrolled in an elementary school or if after enrollment has remained absent from school for 45 days, without prior intimation for reasons of the absence.
A mobile application, TALAASH, has been developed in collaboration with UNICEF-India, which helps to map children who are not enrolled in mainstream education, he said.
Chief education officers, zonal education officers and representatives from Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS), Juvenile Justice Board, Child Protection Committees and Labour Commission participated in the workshop.
