Dropout rate at 27% in Class 10, not 49.9% as stated by centre, says Odisha government

BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha government on Tuesday claimed that the dropout rate in Class 10 was 27 per cent in the state in 2021-22 and not 49.9% as stated by union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan in the Lok Sabha a day before.

Odisha school education programme authority director Anupam Shah asserted that the Centre's data did not include the number of students admitted to various industrial training schools after passing the 10th standard. He also said the school and mass education department will soon clarify its stand on the prevailing dropout rates at the school level.

Responding to a question on Odisha registering the highest dropout rate of 49.9% in Class 10 in 2021-22, he said, the data released by the Centre was old. "The data released by the Centre did not include the number of students admitted to different industrial training schools. The overall dropout rate at present (2022-23) in Odisha would be 17%,” Shah told PTI.

He explained that the dropout rate is calculated by comparing the number of students in Class 11 in a year and the same in Class 10 in the previous year. “However, there is no mention of students who pass the 10th standard and take admissions to technical and vocational schools, polytechnic and open schools across the state," the official said.

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The dropout rate in Class 10 stands at 20.6% as of 2021-22 with Odisha being the worst performing state in this regard followed by Bihar, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed the Lok Sabha on Monday. The dropout rate in Class 10 was 49.9% in Odisha and 42.1 per cent in Bihar, Pradhan said in his written response.