No Child Out of School

Pre-COVID, India had about 9.7 million (NSSO,2018) 6-14 year old out-of-school children. According to the Government of India, a child between the age of 6-14 years will be considered an out-of-school child (OoSC) if the child has never been enrolled or, after enrolment, has been absent from school for more than 45 days without prior intimation (MHRD,2013). With about 20 million children unable to access school education and millions of families pushed into poverty, COVID may have led to a 1.5x increase in school dropouts adding to India’s Out of school children population significantly. The pandemic has proven to be not just a health crisis but also an education crisis.

We want to ensure a significant population of out-of-school children can access education and be retained and regularized within schools for continued learning. We hope to achieve this through yearly intervention with the following steps:

• Identifying out-of-school children in the community through identification campaigns, Door-to-door surveys, and community hotspot surveys
• Enrolment of identified children in schools by supporting parents and children with admission documentation requirements and conducting awareness campaigns to motivate and mobilize parents and community members to send more children to schools.
• Ensuring 85%+ Retention (YoY graduation with 50% attendance) of newly admitted Out-of-school children and regularization (>50% Attendance) of enrolled children with less than 30% attendance by mobilizing government machinery to add resources in schools with high enrolment under the State’s OoSC Special Training Program, supporting schools with additional teaching capacity in the form of trained community volunteers - village-based educated youth, retired professionals, senior students. Also by building parent capacity to participate in School Management Committees through effective questioning and holding the school accountable and advocating with local administration for resources to support school development

We hope to identify, enrol, retain and regularize over 25,000 out-of-school children within two disadvantaged rural districts of Haryana by the year 2023.