Assam’s primary school has gone up in numbers after fake students have been screened | Media Pyro

The dropout rate of primary schools in Assam has almost doubled during 2021-22 compared to the previous budget partly because of the identification of fake students enrolled in several government-run schools.

Another issue was the spillover effect of the spread of COVID-19 in 2020, Assam Education Minister Ranoj Pegu told reporters on November 9 evening.

He said an analysis of data entered into the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) revealed an increase in the primary school enrollment rate from 3.3% in 2020-21 to 6.02% in 2021-22.

The primary school enrollment rate also increased to 8.8% in 2021-22 from 4.6% in 2020-21.

“The total number of students who left in the last audit was 1,29,543. A survey helped us to know that 27,941 of these out-of-school children were never registered,” said Mr. Pegu.

“Many schools have automatically entered inflated enrollments into the UDISE portal to avoid mergers or closures due to low student enrollments. But once the information is cleared, we expect the situation to calm down soon,” he said.

The fake students were also presented on school registration records to receive benefits such as the allocation of inflated midday meals and extra money for school uniforms and free books, Education Department officials said.

Mr. Pegu, however, said that Assam is not the only state that has experienced school dropouts due to calamity.

On the positive side, Assam’s high school dropout rate has come down from 31% in 2020-21 to 20.3% in 2021-22.