Hyderabad: Right to Education Act continues to remain a piece of overlooked legislation in TS and AP with 57,49,225 children and teenagers between 5 and 19 years in the two states not enrolled in any educational institution in 2011. Of these, 50 per cent were those who dropped out.
This is part of the 2011 Census data released recently on 5-19 year-olds not attending educational institutions along with their economic activity.
The data shows how common it was to drop out from educational institutions to contribute financially towards family income or other socio-economic reasons in both the states.
As per the Census data, of the children not enrolled in an educational institution, more than 29 lakh had attended an educational institution but dropped out later.
The remaining around 28 lakh never got enrolled in any educational institution. Of these a whopping 513,134 children work all the year round to support their families. These included 136,080 children aged between 5 and 14 years.
Of those who dropped out, more than 16 lakh worked on various jobs. Of them, 13,52,394, worked all round the year while the rest worked for six months or less in a year.
As per census data, the dropout rate increases as a child grows up. While the number of children who dropped out of school and are working year round in the five years old age group is 2,015, it increases to 7,087 in 10 year-age group and 312,948 in the 19 year-age group.
Among the over 1.78 crore children in the 5-19 age group, who are lucky enough to have got enrolled in an educational institution, 5,40,114 children worked at jobs along with attending school.
Of this, around 46 per cent of the students, that is 246,747 of them, work all round the year to support their families which includes 93,392 children aged between 5-14 years. As per the census data 17,29,755 persons aged between 18 and 19 years were working all through the year at jobs alongside studies.
As per district wise data, the highest number of persons aged between 5 and 14 years not enrolled in any educational institution existed in Mahabubnagar in Telangana at 370,132 and at Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh at 396,942. The figure was 237,648 for Hyderabad.
