Gujarat ramps up mission back to school: Teachers task force tracks, reaches out to 6.4 lakh dropouts

These 10,000 children are a miniscule part of the massive 6.41 lakh dropouts across 44,000 government and grant-in-aid schools in Gujarat who have dropped out of these schools between Class I till X are being tracked down individually.

The workforce of nearly 2 lakh government teachers are tasked with tracking 6.41 lakh drop out students before the 24th edition of the annual school enrollment drive shala praveshotsav and kana kelavani, tentatively scheduled for June 18-20.

In 2003-04, the then Chief Minister and present Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched Kanya Kelvani Mahotsav and Shala Praveshotsav. This year, the state government is focusing on the out-of-school children – estimated to be around 6.41 lakh. As part of the enrollment drive, teams – including Cabinet Ministers, IAS, IPS and IFS officers to local administrators and elected members – are fanning out across the state to ensure that children are enrolled in government schools.Every district was asked to survey the dropouts from each school and track them with the help of UID number, contact their parents and convince them to join the education system again.

“Not only tracking students who were in the education system till 2024-25 but dropped out in 2025-26 from Class I till X with the help of their unique identification number, the teachers have to also ensure that the 6.4 lakh students are enrolled back in schools or any other form of educational institute,” said one of the teachers involved in the drive.

Following the district and city-wise survey, the most common factors that emerged in connection with the students leaving the education system was that a major chunk of them are dropping out after Class V. “Since nearly 10,000 government schools are till Class V and students have to change schools to join Class VI, it came to light that they have dropped out. Similar were the reasons for dropping out from Class VIII and from Class X to XI,” an official of the education department told The Indian Express on Monday.

Apart from ensuring that the dropouts are brought back to the mainstream of education, the education department is tasked to not let the 29 lakh students studying in Class V, VIII and X till 2025-16 drop out but are admitted to the subsequent classes, the official added.

The state government’s focus on reducing the number of dropouts comes amid the ruling BJP’s claim that Gujarat has achieved a dropout rate below one per cent.

Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, while launching the annual state-wide enrollment drive Shala Praveshotsav and Kanya Kelavani on June 26, 2025, from Divda PM Shri School in Kadana taluka of Mahisagar district said, “When the present Prime Minister (Modi) started the school entrance festival in 2003, the dropout rate was around 35 per cent and has been reduced to 0.85 percent, i.e. less than one per cent. The state government has taken sufficient care to ensure that the children enrolled in schools do not drop out. The government stands by such children through the Namo Lakshmi and Namo Saraswati schemes to ensure that they do not face any inconvenience in their studies due to the financial problems of the family.”

Further, the state government has estimated around 11.45 lakh children to be admitted in Class I for the 2026-27 academic session.

With the focus on secondary schools during the three-day enrollment drive, one primary school and two secondary and higher secondary schools would be covered by the teams, officials said.