A year after Women and Child Development (WCD) Minister Smriti Irani launched a campaign to bring out-of-school girls back into the mainstream education system under the `Kanya Shiksha Pravesh Utsav’’, the ministry has brought back 1 lakh girls, who had dropped out of school, within the fold of formal education since July 2022.
Key points
- The campaign was launched in partnership with the Education Ministry.
- It was focused on girls between 11 and 14 years. Anganwadis were meant to map out-of-school girls as part of the campaign.
- In 2012-13, there were 1.4 crore out-of-school girls. When the WCD Ministry started verifying the dropout data, compiled from statistics submitted by states, it was found that the figure of out-of-school girls had dropped to 25 lakh in 2019-20; then 5 lakh in 2021-22; and further decreased to 3.8 lakh in 2022-23.
- One reason the number of dropouts is reducing is because children have been mainstreamed.
- The Scheme for Adolescent Girls in 11-14 age group has since then been discontinued.
- In the new scheme, a new category: adolescent girls between 14 and 18 years has also been created. This is an extremely important category to ensure that generational malnutrition is prevented.
- If an adolescent girl’s nutritional requirements are taken care of, chances of her giving birth to a malnutritioned child when she is of child-bearing age is reduced.
