Class 1-5 student strength in Karnataka dips 7.6% in 1 year

BENGALURU: The number of students in Class 1 to 5 in Karnataka has reduced from 47.3 lakh in 2019-20 to 43.7 lakh in 2020-21, according to a report by the Directorate of Economics and Statistics released earlier this week. The 7.6% dip is huge, given that it is 10 times the 0.7% fall in student strength seen in 2019-20 from 2018-19.
Educationists said the drop is due to the pandemic and added that these out-of-school children may have returned or are likely to return soon because age-appropriate admissions are allowed.They said the bigger impact could be in the learning loss they would go through in the course.

Incidentally, the dip is slightly more among boys at 7.8% than girls at 7.5%, according to the report, ‘Karnataka at a Glance 2020-21'.
According to Dr R Vishal, commissioner of the department of public instruction, the data does not match with that of the education department's Students Achievement Tracking System.
"As per SATS, 54.6 lakh children were studying from class 1-5 in the year 2019-20. We will have to look for the corresponding data for the year 2020-21. The drop of as much as 7.6 % is not seen," he said.
D Shashi Kumar, general secretary, Association of Management of Primary and Secondary Schools of Karnataka, said the data is the tip of the iceberg and more children stayed away from schools than officially conceded.
"During the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, many parents did not enrol children in schools, especially among smaller age groups to avoid paying school fees. The year 2020-21 was also an all-pass year and now many children have joined the higher classes, like a child who was in UKG in 2019-20 is now in class 2, without attending class 1," Kumar said, adding that estimating the learning loss will be a huge task.
According to educationist Niranjana Aradhya, the need of the hour is to track every child who was in school in 2019-20 to ensure that everyone is back in school. "This should not be just a survey to find out how many children are out of school. The government, along with volunteers, must look for every child who had enrolled then and not now. Have they migrated to another place, another school? If not, where are they?" he said.
Lakhs of children not enrolling in schools is a matter of huge concern and the trend may continue in 2021-22 too, said Nagasimha G Rao, director, Child Rights Trust. According to Rao, emphasis must be given to bridge the learning gap by the government tying up with NGOs.
Rao added there were several issues with the government's recent surveys to look for out-of-school children. "Many parents have lied about their children and are not letting children go to school even now due to the fear of Covid," he said.
Rao said initiatives need to be taken up to strengthen the bonding between children and schools, along with the counselling of parents. Many children are taking up their parents' work and they must be brought back to the fold of learning in schools, he added.