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Ensure names of children who migrated during pandemic are not struck off school rolls: HRD to states

New Delhi: The HRD ministry on Tuesday asked states and union territories to ensure that the names of children of migrant workers who returned home during the COVID-19 pandemic are not struck off their school rolls.

Issuing a set of guidelines, the ministry also directed the states to prepare a database of children who have left the local area for their homes in other states or other parts of the same state.

Such children should be noted in the database as "migrated" or "temporarily unavailable", the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) said.

"Such a database may be prepared by each school by personally contacting parents or guardians of all children studying in their school, through phone, WhatsApp, neighbours or peer groups. Their tentative place of stay during this period may also be noted. Such children, who have left, may be shown separately in enrolment as temporarily unavailable or migrated.

"While all care must be taken to ensure that their names are not struck off the rolls (as the possibility of their return anytime is always there), their numbers may be reported class-wise to the Directorate of Education to compensate for any input costs to be incurred by the school such as mid-day meals, distribution of textbooks and uniforms if not already completed," the ministry said in its guidelines.

It also suggested that the state governments may direct all schools to give admission to any child who recently returned to village without asking for any other documents, except for some identity proof.

"They should not ask for transfer certificates or proof of class attended earlier. The information provided by the child's parents may be assumed to be correct and taken as such for giving admission to the child in the relevant class in his or her neighbourhood government or government-aided school," the guidelines said.

"Children who are thus admitted may be facilitated to continue their learning by providing remedial learning support through the school and allowed to adjust to the new school environment. They may be provided books from the book banks or libraries maintained by the schools. Peer learning may also be encouraged for such children. They may also be provided mid-day meals along with the other children of their school," the ministry added.

States maintaining a digitised child wise data, have been asked to update it with every in-migrated or every out-migrated child's detail. For every out-migrated child, data may be shared with the States where the children have migrated to, it suggested.

The lockdown announced on March 24 to contain the spread of coronavirus threw economic activities out of gear, rendering many homeless and penniless and leading to an exodus of migrants to their home states.

"In view of the lockdown due to COVID 19 a large number of migrant labourers have been returning to their homes and are likely to stay there for varying periods. Along with the migrant workers, their families and children are also returning to their homes," a senior HRD Ministry official said.

"For these children this will lead to a disruption in their studies and learning. As a result, some states may see a reduction in numbers of children enrolled in their schools or they will be reported as absent, while others will see a surge in children requiring admissions. In order to ensure that there is no loss of learning or academic year for all such children, he have issued these guidelines for states and union territories with regard to children of migrant labourers," the official added.

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