District Administration Kishtwar, in collaboration with District Institute of Education Training (DIET), Education Department and other Stakeholders have geared up to intensify the Mission Back to School under Project Taalash in the district.
The Campaign aims to bring Out Of the School Children (OOSC) including Dropouts and Never enrolled Children of 6-14 year age group back to the schools.
In this regard, Deputy Commissioner, Dr Devansh Yadav (IAS) chaired a meeting of all the stakeholders here in the Conference Hall DC Office Complex to review the implementation of the project Talaash in the district besides discussing various interventions to bring OOSCs back to school.
During the meeting, the strategies to bring back the drop outs and never enrolled children were discussed threadbare and a number of deliberations were made.
At the outset, Deputy Commissioner was apprised till date DIET Kishtwar has identified 2157 drop out students and never enrolled children in 6-14 year age group under Taalash Survey conducted across the district.
He was further informed that these OOSCs are being brought back to the school from the month of March-April 2023 onwards and the process will be conducted in a phased manner.The roles and responsibilities of the stakeholder departments were also highlighted in the meeting.
The Deputy Commissioner impressed upon the stakeholders to devise a comprehensive plan, by involving the departments like Labour, Social welfare, Health, ICDS, RDD which have a wide base at community level, to aware motivate, sensitise and encourage the parents to re-enroll their children and avail the various educational assistance and other welfare schemes.
He asked all the stakeholders to put in collaborative and collective efforts to make the operation TALAASH a grand success in the district by encouraging all these children to enroll back to school.
DC Kishtwar exhorted the officers of DIET and Education Department to start special winter Camps within two days for OOSC at identified places particularly in ST population areas where Drop out rate is high and involve the ST members, PRIs and NGOs in the process.
He declared the programme a boon for needy children keeping in mind that education is the right of every child.The ZEOs were asked to ensure close monitoring of the implementation of the project in their respective jurisdiction to ensure the attendance of OOSC.
Stress was laid on mobilisation of the Education Volunteers and Mobile teachers in the process.Various points like framing of Bridge course, Training of Mobile teachers, Date of Birth certificate of OOSC, Baseline Assessment of children, mental health support, conducting of extracurricular activities were also discussed in the meeting and various soft and hard interventions were proposed to sort out these issues.
The meeting was attended by ADDC, Sham Lal; ACD, Atul Dutt Sharma; DSWO, Zubair Ahmed; Tehsildar HQ, Chander Shekhar Sharma; CEO, Sudarshan Kumar Sharma; Principal DIET, Ashok Kumar; HOD DIET, Parmeela Sharma; Sr Lecturers, ZEOs, HOIs, PRIs, besides other concerned.