The Musahar community that has 60 households sends just a boy -- Chandar Kumar Sada -- to the school while 123 others of school going age don´t go to school. “There is no one more educated than the fifth grader in the community while no other child is going to school,” said Chalitar Sada, a local. [break]
Everybody notices the settlement that is smack in front of the DEO main gate but the DEO has never paid attention to it. “I didn´t know that the children right in front of our eyes are illiterate. Now that I knew, I will take initiative to take them to school,” District Education Officer Ambika Sah said.
Shockingly the dalit children have never been told to go to school despite being so close to DEO. “We stay at home, baby-sitting our brothers and sisters after parents go away for work,” Dharmendra Kumar Sada, 10, said.
Anuj Sada, a local, rued that 15 children including one Jugari Sada had gone to Bal Mandir for a year but they got frustrated after not getting text books even in a year and stopped pursuing education.
Teachers say dalit students in other parts of the districts also stop going to school after getting admitted through the enrollment program. Around 100 children of school going age in 55 households of Musahar community in Lalpur-1 and another 150 of a Musahar settlement near a primary school in Aurahi-8 also don´t go to school.
A survey by Dalit Jana Kalyan Youth Club, Lahan has found that just three percent of Musahars are literate while the literacy rate for the district is 45 percent. Education experts say the government cannot attain the literacy target of Millennium Development Goal for 2015 if the Musahar kids are not drawn toward schools.
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