It has been made known that 37,500 children do not go to school in Tamil Nadu. The Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) conducted the survey across Tamil Nadu in April to find out details about the situation in the State.
The officials mentioned that Thiruvallur and Kancheepuram districts neighboring Chennai, which are part of the Chennai metropolis, are among the top of the list with over 2,000 out-of-school children in each of them.
On the other hand, in some other districts like Villupuram, Erode and Salem, the out-of-school children were found to be from internally-migrating laborers. In Chennai and nearby areas, like in the case of some of the industrialized nodes like Coimbatore, these are children of migrant labourers from other States. The survey found that these children move with their parents who have come over in search of better prospects. These families are mostly from Bengal, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.
In an effort to bring in these children back to the mainstream, SSA has joined hands with several non-governmental organizations to run special centres for these children in the places where the survey has found a substantial number of such cases.