Akshaya Patra welcomes the The Child Tracking System (CTS) which is now being used by several government departments and is helping them take various health and education schemes to the children they are meant for more effectively.
For instance, the CTS is allowing the Department of Public Instruction keep a watch on dropouts and improve their social-economic conditions under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan scheme. The relevant information is fed into the system for online tracking and the complete database of dropouts brought back to school, is updated in every taluk with each student’s photograph, name and family history.
As many as 1,244 of the 1,763 dropouts identified in early 2012-13 have been brought back to school this way. The CTS is helping identify potential dropouts and counsel them on the importance of education.
Akshaya Patra through its midday meal programme is also helping in reducing the dropout rates.
Many parents find it difficult to arrange a square meal for their children. Their resource are too meagre to take care of the need of the entire family. If mother is working she has to leave the house early for having no time to prepare food. Such circumstances force them to take their children out of school to either work outside or do household chores. In such cases Akshaya Patra’s mid day meal acts as a big support for them taking off the burden of arranging meal for the child and allowing their children to study with filled stomachs
Akshaya Patra through its mid day- meal programme is feeding 1.3 million children across 19 locations of 9 Indian states covering more than 9000 schools every day. The hot nutritious meal served acts as an incentive for the parents to make their children stay in school or let them join school. A.C Nielson study shows that mid day meal has reduced dropout rate and increased attendance, enrolment t with better performance of the students.
Source: http://www.deccanchronicle.com/130227/news-current-affairs/article/track-child-check-dropouts
