Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi to bring dropout students back to school under "Sharda" program

Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh) [India], April 1 (ANI): Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's government on Saturday started the "Sharda" program (School Har Din Aayein) to find and re-admit dropout students, in addition to launching the "School Chalo Abhiyan".
Notably, under the Right of Free and Compulsory Education to Children Act, 2009, there is a provision that children in the age group of 6-14 years who are out of school, should be identified and enrolled in age-appropriate classes and special training should be arranged for those children.
In order to effectively implement this provision, instructions have been given from time to time to run the 'Sharda' program under the direction of the District Magistrate.
The order issued by the Director General School Education Vijay Kiran Anand said, "There is a provision for re-admission of all out-of-school children under the 'Sharda' program. Children who are "out of school" can be divided into two categories - children who have never been enrolled in school and children who were earlier enrolled in the school but due to some reason left the school without completing their education i.e. dropped out."
Instructions state that school principals, teachers, shikshamitras, instructors, and each BTC trainee will conduct a household survey in order to identify out-of-school children and enrol them in classes that are appropriate for their age.
This campaign will be conducted in two phases in the academic session 2023-24.
In the first phase, children will be identified and enrolled in age-appropriate classes from April 1, 2023, to May 15, 2023, while in the second phase, identification and enrollment of children of families affected by brick kiln mines and seasonal migration in age-appropriate classes will be done from July 1, 2023, to July 31, 2023.
Besides, the identification of out-of-school children with special needs will also be carried out simultaneously, which would be followed by their enrollment in age-appropriate classes.
Migration certificates will be made available to the migrating children so that the child can be enrolled in the school nearest to the place of migration.
According to the instructions, the first assessment (baseline assessment) of all out-of-school children enrolled for special training in classes 2 to 8 will take place through the Sharda app after 15 days of identification. The second assessment will be done in October, the third assessment in January and the fourth assessment in March.
Based on the results of the assessment, a teaching plan will be prepared by the nodal teacher for the education of the nominated out-of-school children.
Regular attendance of these children will be monitored regularly by the designated nodal teacher and headmaster for special training.
To bring them into the mainstream, these children will be linked to social security schemes. Arrangements will be made to provide special training to out-of-school children enrolled in age-appropriate classes in schools on the basis of the 'Sharda' Curriculum.
For this, the nodal teacher has been trained at the block level.
Monitoring of 20 schools will be done every month by special educators and information regarding identification, enrollment, evaluation, and attendance of out-of-school children will be uploaded through the Sharda app. (ANI)