COVID-19 pandemic sees 10,000 students drop out of BMC schools in Mumbai: Survey

The BMC now faces the challenge of bringing back the students to schools. Representation pic

The COVID pandemic has pushed over 10,000 students out of schools in the city, a BMC survey has found. The civic body's education department ran the exercise under a state initiative to track such students and bring them back to schooling.

BMC officials have found that 9,995 students have gone out of the school system in Mumbai mostly due to migration after the coronavirus outbreak. The 10-day survey also showed that there are 182 new children currently in the city but away from schools. The 10,177 ‘missing' students comprise 5,275 boys and 4,902 girls.

"The initial task was to reach out to the children from our schools who have not been able to study online during the pandemic. These children number 9,995 which also include 149 with special needs. Under the campaign, we had our teachers making rounds to the localities near their schools to identify children who are from school-appropriate ages but are yet not admitted to any school. In that process, 182 children were identified," said an official from the BMC's education department.

This number of newly identified out-of-school children in the city was 264 last year. BMC teachers visit slums and streets in their vicinity to identify out-of-school children every year around June and July.

"These are generally children of those from the labour class who migrate to Mumbai for work. This year the number of students identified under this drive turned out to be much lesser, which makes one feel that not many are coming to the city to find work as yet," explained the official.

These new children will be admitted to nearby BMC schools in classes appropriate to their age and their learning will begin as it is continuing for other students from their school. However, the bigger challenge for authorities is to bring back the 9,995 out-of-school students.

"These are the children who were admitted to civic schools in the city but have stopped schooling due to the COVID outbreak. As the reasons due to which these children went out of the school system continue with the prevailing conditions, the department will talk to their parents. Teachers will be trained for this," added the official.