8,850 students aged between 6-14 years dropped out of their schools in Tripura during the Covid-19 pandemic, state education minister Ratan Lal Nath said.
The government will conduct a door-to-door survey soon to find out if there are any more school drop-out students. The government has decided to restart the ‘vidyalaya chalo abhiyan’ (let’s go to school) to convince the dropout students to join school again.
Apart from Anganwadi and ASHA workers, final-year college students will also be involved as surveyors.
If the students could identify and convince them to get readmission in schools, they will be given remuneration of ₹500 for each admission. If teachers are involved in the survey, they would be getting ₹200 for each admission.
The government has decided to adopt a new scheme, ‘Earn while Learning’, for final-year college students.
The state has also decided to provide free school bags to over 1.51 lakh pre-primary to Class 3 students with a budget of ₹7.58 crore.
Currently, the state is providing free books to Class 1 to 8 students and school uniforms for girls and Scheduled Tribe (ST), Scheduled Caste (SC) and Below Poverty Line (BPL) students of the same classes.