W&CD, S&ME differ on out-of-school girls info

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Bhubaneswar: The Women and Child Development (W&CD) department and School and Mass Education (S&ME) department differ on figures on adolescent girls out of school in the state.
During survey by its field level functionaries, the W&CD department has found that as many 55,868 adolescent girls of age group 11 to 14 years are out of schools. However, the S&ME department is not ready to accept the findings of the Women and Child Development department as it claims that only 1,060 adolescent girls were not attending schools as of September 30 last year.
The government has collected the data to execute the Scheme for Adolescent Girls (SAG) which was universalised from April 1 this year.
The 55,868 adolescent girls include those who never enrolled or enrolled but never attended and dropouts.
W&CD joint secretary Rashmiranjan Nayak said they had sought a preliminary report from districts to ascertain the number of out-of-school girls in the state. They have asked the School and Mass Education department to take steps for enrolment of these girls in schools.
There are 10,599 out of the school adolescent girls in Koraput, followed by 8,899 girls in Nabarangpur, 5,585 girls in Malkangiri and 4296 in Ganjam district. Only Bhadrak district has zero out of school girls.
Reacting to this figure, S&ME Minister Badri Narayan Patra expressed surprise over such huge discrepancies in the report of his department and W&CD department.
“I’m also surprised at the difference between their figures and ours. As per the survey conducted by Odisha Primary Education Programme Authority (OPEPA) there were only 1,060 girl child dropout till September 30, 2017. How such a big discrepancy? I’ve to discuss with the department how they collected this figure and who are the enumerators,” Patra said.