Gujrat : In order to curb drop out ratio and get to the root of identifying the reasons for students’ prolonged absence from schools, the Kutch primary education department has launched an initiative – My School, E-School.
The initiative which is into its third year running has contributed to principals having direct access to track the attendance details of their respective students and teachers. The project as a pilot was implemented 3 years back in Kidana girl’s primary school in Gandhidham taluka in Kutch. The school has a strength of 459 children and the school authorities feel that keeping tab on the attendance of children on a regular basis has helped them identify dropouts.
“Students from families living below poverty line come here to study and it has taken immense efforts to go out to their houses and convince them of the benefits of education during the annual Shalapraveshotsav conducted by the Gujarat government. So now that we have the enrolment, it was our duty to contribute to retention as well,” said Dilip Patel, Principal of the school.
The modus operandi involved in ‘My School, E-School’ is quite simple, teachers are requested to fill in the attendance in a given format soon after they have taken the attendance in class manually. This process Dilip believed contributed to teachers as well as the principal to be in the know of the attendance of their class and in specific their own students.
“It is the responsibility of the respective class teacher to feed in their attendance details, day in, day out. That also ensures we monitor the attendance of teachers as well. Once we have got the attendance details for a week, we check those students who have been regular absentees and manage to find out the reason with the help of their respective class teachers,” explained Dilip Patel.