Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: A total of 5,200 teachers across over 450 municipal schools in Ahmedabad have tracked down around 10,000 students who dropped out between Classes I and VIII in the 2025-26 academic session.
The 10,000 children are a miniscule part of the massive 6.41 lakh dropouts across 44,000 government and grantin-aid schools in Gujarat, dropped out between Class I till X, who 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. 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. 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 said according to a media report.
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, 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.
