Jharkhand government on Tuesday launched an extensive ‘Back to School’ campaign aimed at retention and enrolment of dropouts, immigrants and not yet enrolled children and children with special needs.

The month-long campaign was rolled out in all of the nearly 30,000 state-owned schools (primary, middle and secondary level) with fun-filled activities lined up for ‘No-Bag Day’.

“In the last two years when the schools were closed because of the Covid pandemic, a large number of children have dropped out or have developed learning blocks and we hope to address this problem through the campaign with the active involvement and cooperation of all stakeholders — public representatives, school managing committees, faculties, parents and teachers,” said Jharkhand Education Project Council (JEPC) project director Kiran Kumari Pasi.

The campaign has set an objective of ensuring enrolment and attendance of dropout, non-resident and un-enrolled kids and children with special needs of 5-18 years age group and verifying 100 per cent enrolment and attendance of all the children enrolled between classes I and XII from previous classes to the next classes. It also aims at registering attendance of all the children in e-vidyavahini portal, regular monitoring and creating awareness for reducing the fear of impact of Covid-19 and ensuring daily learning process.

The campaign would begin with district-level meetings to be chaired by the deputy commissioners of the concerned districts with public representatives, district-level officers of all government departments, block development officers (BDOs), block-level education officers and plan on orientation, planning and review of the ‘Back to School’ campaign.

Similarly, BDOs would chair the block level meeting at all the blocks.

While a 20-day activity would be planned at the school level for identifying absenting students and making their list, ensuring availability of all subject books in school library, arranging for home visit of students not attending schools and informing their parents and ensuring meeting with children of immigrant families and the children with special needs and convincing parents to send their children to schools along with regular session on Covid-appropriate behaviour, sanitisation and other measures to protect against Covid.

The highlight would be regularly organising ‘No-Bag Day’ at all schools by respective class teachers wherein activities related to kitchen, garden and horticulture would be conducted with special mid-day meals for children.

The No-Bag Day would also have fun-filled activities in sports, music, debate and discussion, drawing and painting, story writing, essay writing and poem recitation in the first phase.

While in the second phase, No-Bag Day would have activities such as wall magazine decoration, write-ups for school magazine, birthday celebration of great persons, folk songs and dance, school decoration and fancy dress competition.

The third phase of No-Bag Day would have activities such as preparation of charts and models, album making, photography, clay modelling, toy making, book binding and community service.

According to a household survey carried out by the department of school education and literacy, Jharkhand, about 2,00,000 children have been dropped out during the Covid pandemic. At the same time, more than one lakh children did not ensure their enrolment.