To bring down the number of dropouts, India to adopt the Netherlands model

Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government will send a 12-member team to the Netherlands under the leadership of Basic Education Minister Sandeep Singh to study the early warning system.

A government spokesperson said the model is likely to help the state re-enrol school dropouts.

The Netherlands has developed an early warning system to prevent children from skipping school. Under the system, a child is tracked by the authorities if he remains absent from school for more than 40 days.

The parents (or guardians) are then contacted and it is ensured that the child returns to school. A similar model may soon be implemented in Uttar Pradesh as well to reduce the number of school dropouts.

Along with implementing the Netherlands model, the state is also planning to run various awareness campaigns to encourage parents to send their children to school.

The system is likely to be implemented by the end of this year. According to the survey of Basic Education Department, around 4.81 lakh children were found out of school in the state in 2020-21.

This figure was 4 lakh in 2021-22 and more than 3.30 lakh in 2022-23. Director General of School Education Vijay Kiran Anand said that on the lines of early warning system, special efforts will be made to connect absentee children and children who do not go to school with the mainstream of education.