Why kids bunk school: survey finds out

The year-long pilot project that was reviewed has created awareness among the teachers and parents,says Shrikant Hingane,coordinator of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan’s Inclusive education project. So much so that 35 more schools are being added to the school mental health programme and an additional 100 teachers from the PMC run schools will be trained. The funds are provided from the District Planning and Development Committee and this year Rs 10 lakh has been sanctioned for the programme.

According to Rajesh Thombre,coordinator of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan’s “out of school” children,there were 6,334 children who dropped out of PMC schools in the year 2008-09. There are 93,545 children studying in 270 schools run by the civic body. In fact when Dr Alka Pawar,director of the Maharashtra Institute of Mental Health attended a meeting of school teachers on evaluation methods in schools,she was alarmed that the school’s performance was solely being rated on the scholastic performance of the child.

”While meritorious children should always be encouraged,those with poor scholastic performance should not be neglected and efforts should be taken to understand the reasons behind the increasing absenteeism. The teacher is also evaluated on how well her class performs and hence the stress is felt on both teacher and student,”says Pawar who decided to take up a ‘school mental health programme’ to understand why children drop out of schools.

”School teachers are also under surveillance and often burden the child with a series of tests. The project aimed at evaluating the children with poor scholastic performance and we found that out of 1100 children,82 had behavioural and emotional problems,76 were borderline cases.

While those diagnosed with psychiatric morbidity were eleven who had mild mental retardation,adjustment problems and learning disabilities,Pawar says the findings are important as it created awareness about the need of an intervention programme here. “There were 25 children who were affected family conflicts,single parenting and alcoholism,” says Narendra Sale,coordinator of the mental health programme at the PMC schools. As part of the extension of the programme,an urban health centre has been identified at Mangalwar Peth where counselors will also interact with parents of the children with special needs.