Biannual survey, on-the-spot admission: SOP to bring out-of-school children back into education system

Time of India

03-05-2025

New Delhi: In a renewed push to reintegrate thousands of
out-of-school children
into classrooms,
Samagra Shiksha
, a society under the education department of Delhi govt, has issued a detailed standard operating procedure (SOP) for their identification, enrolment, and smooth inclusion into regular govt schools. The SOP, notified on May 1, also includes specific provisions for
children with special needs
(CwSN).
The initiative aims to ensure that every child in the 6–14 age group, and up to 18 years for CwSN with benchmark disabilities, receives free and compulsory education as mandated under the Right to Education Act, 2009. The SOP is designed to simplify the admission process by requiring minimal documentation and to establish a time-bound mechanism for enrolling all identified children swiftly.
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According to the notification, biannual surveys will be conducted during summer and winter vacations by teams formed under Samagra Shiksha. Each school cluster will have at least one survey team, and more will be deployed in areas such as Mangolpuri, Janakpuri, Nangloi, Wazirpur, Sangam Vihar, and North East Delhi where probability of finding out-of-school children is high.
Special focus will be placed on the inclusion of CwSN, with survey teams comprising special education teachers capable of identifying children with disabilities. District project officers and deputy directors of education will identify potential hotspots like unauthorised colonies, construction sites, industrial zones, and railway stations, and prepare area-specific survey schedules.
Survey team members will collect necessary information, such as contact details and addresses, from parents or guardians. They are also required to counsel families on the importance of education and guide them through the enrolment process. The collected data will be shared with district project officers through the relevant resource coordinators for immediate action.
To avoid delays, the SOP specifies that every identified child must be admitted within three working days to a nearby govt school, either directly in an age-appropriate class or into a special training centre for bridge education following a basic learning assessment.
Admission will require only minimal documentation such as address proof, birth certificate, or an undertaking by the parent/guardian. A provisional admission valid for 30 days will be allowed on the basis of a simple handwritten undertaking. During this time, school heads and staff must assist in completing the documentation process with support from school management committee members and others.
No child, including refugees, asylum seekers, destitute children, orphans, migrants, and homeless children, is to be denied admission due to lack of documentation.
Heads of Schools across all govt schools under DoE, MCD, NDMC and DCB have been instructed to ensure children and parents are not stopped at school gates by security staff. Instead, they must be guided respectfully to the admission in-charge. School heads are also expected to sensitise their staff and security personnel on who to assist such parents and children.
The SOP further urges school authorities to complete the admission process or at least give provisional admission on the same day, especially considering the economic hardship of many families. The school heads have been asked to avoid putting pressure on parents to visit Aadhaar centres, banks, or other govt offices for documentation and instead provide necessary help at the school level, in a language and manner they can easily understand.
The district project officers will prepare daily reports on identified children and track their enrolment status. These reports are to be submitted to the Samagra Shiksha headquarters using a prescribed format for centralised monitoring.
In addition to field surveys, the school heads must proactively deploy special training centres teachers or school management committee members in their areas to identify dropouts or children who never enrolled in school. The purpose is to integrate every out-of-school children and CwSN into regular schooling or special training centres as early as possible.
According to official figures, there were 41,201 out-of-school children identified in Delhi in the 2023 academic session, a sharp increase from 29,711 in 2021–22 and 29,161 in 2020–21.