Three northeast states Arunachal, Nagaland and Meghalaya revealed alarming figures of primary school dropout rates, at a survey.
Union Human Resource Development Minister (HRD) Prakash Javadekar revealed the figures of primary school dropout rates of the northeast states, at the ongoing winter session of the Parliament in Lok Sabha.
The survey was done during the period 2016-17.
Among the northeastern states, Arunachal Pradesh recorded the highest percentage of primary school drop out in the country at 23.25 per cent.
This was followed by Nagaland and Meghalaya at 20.95 per cent and 17.69 per cent respectively, reports TOI.
The primary school drop out rates of other northeastern states includes Manipur (16.79%), Mizoram(15.36%), Assam(5.60%), Tripura (4.39%).
In the upper primary level, Nagaland and Meghalaya recorded the second and third highest percentage of drop outs in the country at 18.28 per cent and 17.59 per cent respectively.
The upper primary level school drop outs of other northeastern states includes- Arunachal Pradesh (12.81%), Manipur (12.76%), Mizoram (9.88% ), Tripura (5.34%) and Assam (2.51%).
However, the rate of secondary level school drop outs of the northeastern states were not much higher as none of the states featured in the top of the chart of secondary school level drop out rates.
Even in the higher secondary school level drop out rates, the performance of northeastern states were better as none of them featured in the top positions.
Overall, the primary school level drop out rates shows that the efforts of the government of the northeastern states to improve school education is not so good and is yet to yield effective results.
A statement tabled in the house by the HRD minister said that as per independent surveys commissioned by the ministry to estimate children out of schools in the country earlier, the major reasons were poverty or economic reasons, lack of interest in studies, disabilities or poor health.