Bhubaneswar: As many as 49,098 students dropped out of school ahead of entering higher secondary level in Odisha in the pandemic-hit 2020-21. The number included 15,792 tribal and 11,045 Scheduled Caste (SC) category students.
In 2019-20, Odisha saw a dropout of 8,168 students after secondary school, Odisha’s School and Mass Education Minister Sameer Ranjan Dash said in a reply in the assembly on Thursday.
Data says the highest dropout of 6,731 students were in the Kalahandi district, which included 2,086 ST and 905 SC students. Kalahandi was followed by Koraput district with 3,587 dropouts, including 1,821 ST and 618 SC students, reported The Indian Express.
The lowest dropout was recorded in the Mayurbhanj district with 13 students, followed by Cuttack with 19 dropouts.
Among the coastal districts, Ganjam’s 2,363, Bhadrak’s 1,822, Khurda’s 1,734, Balasore’s 1,592, Jagatsinghpur’s 1,364 and Puri’s 1,255 dropped out of school. Sundargarh and Angul saw 3,426 and 2,715 students leaving school prematurely.
Similarly, 2,679 students dropped out in Bargarh, 2,350 in Nuapada, 2,020 in Malkangiri and 2,011 in Keonjhar.
The dropout rate that fell to six per cent for primary, upper primary and elementary sections in 2018-19, abruptly rose to 23.39 per cent in the next academic session. The Net Enrolment Ratio (NER) for secondary sections also witnessed a decrease from 57.51 per cent in 2018-19 to 54.62 in 2019-20.
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