Up to 19,000 children in Kapilvastu district are out of school even as the District Education Office (DEO) has been organising enrolment campaigns for the past few years. Fifty-five percent of them are girls.

According to records at the DEO, 12,000 children were not enrolled in schools two years ago. District Education Officer Hari Gautam said the campaign has been ineffective.

In Kapilvastu Municipality, the number of children who do not go to school is around 1,500. “We need to conduct a separate campaign to enroll them in schools,” said Gautam, stressing the need for making parents aware of the importance of educating their children.

The DEO data shows that 17,000 children aged between five and 12 years have no access to education. DEO official Baburam Bhattarai said many of them are out of school due to the poverty of their families.

There are several causes of dropout. Narendra Chaudhary, a teacher at Chhatrapali Tirthadevi Higher Secondary School, said the authorities concerned should identify the problems and implement programmes to attract children to school. 

"Many have quit school due to a lack of child-friendly instruction,” Chaudhary informed.

Most of the children deprived of education are from marginalised and impoverished communities such as Dalits. 

There are 105,000 students studying at 427 community schools in the district.