Kerala has lowest school dropout rate in country: Minister

Kerala has the lowest school dropout rate in the country at 0.11 per cent as compared to the national average of 4.13 per cent, state education minister C Raveendranath told the Assembly on Monday.

While replying to a question posed by legislator K Rajan (CPI), the minister said Kerala has witnessed a rise in strength of students in public schools of the state.

"Around 6.79 lakh new students enrolled in government schools in the state.The graph of the rate of admission in the public schools is constantly rising in the state," Raveendranath said. He said in 2019-2020, the dropout rate has gone down to 0.11 per cent from 0.22 per cent in 2016-17.

"As per the report of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, the average dropout rate in the country is 4.13 per cent.It also shows that the national average of school dropout among higher secondary students was 17.06 per cent while in Kerala it was 0.15 per cent," the minister said.

In the Upper Primary section, the minister said the dropout rate in Kerala was 0.06 per cent. He also added that in certain districts like Alappuzha, the dropout rate was as low as 0.02 per cent. Raveendranath said the state was able to achieve such milestones due to modernisation of the educational system.

"Drop-out ratio of high schools has declined from 0.33 per cent in 2016-17 to 0.15 per cent in 2019-20.The decline is seen at all stages of school education," according to Economic Review report. There were 2,079 Higher Secondary Schools (HSS) in 2020 in the State.

The Economic Review report, which was tabled recently in the Assembly, says there is an increase in the enrollment of students in 2019-20 to 37.17 lakh from 37.04 lakh in 2018-19. The increase is more prominent in the enrollment in the LP section.

Compared to previous years, around 1,56,565 new students sought admission in government and government aided schools in Kerala in the academic year 2017-18. This number increased further to 1,85,971 for the year 2018-19 and was 1,63,558 for 2019-20, the Review said.