All set for Child Census 2008

[sajiv]

Primary schools to remain closed from

December 18 to 20

5,358 enumerators, 559 supervisors to be involved in collecting data

MANGALORE: Various government departments in the district, as well as non- governmental organisations (NGOs) are gearing up for the State-wide "Child census 2008", scheduled for December 18, 19 and 20.

The government, government-aided and private primary schools will remain closed on these three days. The primary school teachers will be engaging themselves in the door-to-door collection of data about children below 14.

Objectives
The child census programme of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) aims at indexing three major pieces of information: The number of children, who will become eligible for school or class 1 by June 2009; the number of children between six and 14 who are out of school; and the number of children below the age of 14 involved in child labour.

The census will attempt at finding reasons as to why children below 14 have stayed away from school.

Geetha Shetty, assistant project officer for Dakshina Kannada for SSA, said that the census would provide crucial indicators for the enrolment drive to be launched in June next.

Advantage
The data would help in identifying the thrust areas for the residential bridge courses. These bridge courses were designed to prepare the drop-outs for mainstream schooling. Tent and mobile schools would be set up in areas with high density of drop-outs based on these statistics, she said.

Preparations
A joint coordination committee, chaired by the Deputy Commissioner, will carry out the census operation in the district.

The committee will comprise representatives from the Department of Women and Child Development, Labour Department, Mangalore Urban Development Authority, Social Welfare Department and some NGOs. Ms. Shetty said that 5,358 enumerators and 559 supervisors would span out in the district to collect the data from an estimated 4,59,000 households.

Least drop-outs
According to the previous child census conducted in January this year, Dakshina Kannada, together with Udupi, had the distinction of having the lowest number of school drop-outs. It had been found that only 450 children were out of school in these districts.

According to Ms. Shetty, only three of these 450 continue to be out of school. A majority of the out-of-school children in the district were from migratory workers' families. A substantial number of these children were bed-ridden, physically or mentally challenged, she added.