The Delhi government is in the process of tracking students who had stopped attending school after the pandemic and is working on ways to bring them back into the system, Delhi Education Minister Manish Sisodia said. Speaking with The Indian Express’s national education editor Ritika Chopra at the India Education Summit, Sisodia said that as of now around 1,700 such students have been brought back into the system. He was speaking on ‘States and Education Play’. Asked what the government is doing to retain students, especially at the senior secondary level, Sisodia said a cell has been formed under Delhi Commission for Protection for Child Rights (DCPCR) which has access to the online attendance system. “If a child doesn’t go to school for three days straight, a message goes to their parents making inquiries,” he said. “If they don’t come for five days continuously, then calls go out. If there is no response even after that, in a decentralised manner principals and managing committees send teachers to trace these students back.” While stating that 1,700 such students have been brought back into the system, Sisodia admitted that there are still a “large number” of students who are not traceable, many of whose parents are migrant workers who have moved. On learning during the pandemic, Sisodia said online classes can never replace offline education and if ever a pandemic strikes and the switch is needed to be made, courses and curriculum will need to be overhauled to suit the medium. On the need to make the youth global citizens, as emphasised by Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan earlier in the day, Sisodia said, “To make children global citizens, teachers should first know what the world is doing. That is why we gave them global exposure by sending them outside to learn how schools work in other countries.”
