Children going to madrassas are out-of-school students, says Maharashtra govt

A letter sent by Jayshree Mukherjee, principal secretary of the Minority Affairs Department of Maharashtra to Nand Kumar, principal secretary of the state’s School Education and Sports Department, has dubbed madrassas in Maharashtra as ’non-schools’ and has directed that all madrassa students be classified as ‘out-of -school children’, reports Times of India. [caption id=“attachment_2323228” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational Image. AFP[/caption] According to another report in DNA, the state government had already planned to track the number of out-of-school children on 4 July after being pulled up by the Comptroller and Auditor General’s latest report for shoddy implementation of the RTE. Though, no mention had been made of including madrassas then_,_ Mukherjee’s letter invariably means that students going to madrassas would also come under the category of ‘out-of-school children’. The reason behind this decision, according to Dilip Kamble, Minister of State for Minority Affairs, is so that kids going to madrassas can be enrolled into mainstream education, said TOI Recently in June, the Minister for Minorities Welfare Eknath Khadse had announced that no grants would be given to madrassas which would not teach subjects like science, maths, English, social sciences as well, reported Asian Age. There are 1,889 madrassas in the state and a subsidy of Rs 5,50,000 per year is provided to each.