March 10, 2016
Md Nadimul Haque makes a Special Mention regarding school timings at primary level
Sir, attendance constitutes the most important factor in children’s learning at all levels of education. Though the overall attendance of students under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan has shown improvement from 68.5% in 2006 to 76.2% in 2013 at the primary level, and, from 75.7% in 2006 to 77.8% in 2013 at the upper primary level, a pattern of low attendance still continues to pose a challenge for children’s learning and development at the primary and upper primary levels. One of the reasons for absence of primary and upper primary students from schools has been attributed to children’s requirement to help parents in their agricultural activities. This is particularly required because harvesting of some crops is a labour-intensive process. The problem is further aggravated by the fact that presently there is no adequate system put in place to track students’ attendance during the harvesting season which, in turn, culminates into poor curriculum planning for the year and finally leads to students not only breaking a continuous study momentum for a particular year but also missing important lessons for their learning.
Hence, education being a concurrent subject, we demand from the Government to put in place adequate mechanisms to track the trend of students’ attendance during the harvesting season and to make necessary changes in school timings during the harvesting season to adjust the same as per the needs of the children.
