Many children from the Batar, Musahar and Halkhor communities in Siraha district are out of school. The dropout rate among the children from these three communities is also high.

In total 8,283 children are studying in 55 schools of Dhangadhimai Municipality. Among them, 2,608 students are from the Dalit community. The number of Dalit students is very few in upper grades. According to the municipal data, there are only 158 students from the Dalit and marginalised communities in grades 10-12.

“Only 13 percent of the Dalit children and 7 percent of the marginalised children are studying in the secondary level,” said Bhairab Prasad Gelal, campus chief at Shalesh Campus, referring to it as a critical situation.

“The parents need to be made aware of the importance of educating their children.”

Stakeholders said 83 percent of the school-going children are out of school in Dhangadhimai Municipality. The literacy rate of Siraha stands at 46 percent.

“Although parents enrol their children to schools, they don’t send them to schools  regularly due to lack of awareness and poor economic condition,” said Dolraj Pande, chief of the Education Development and Coordination Unit.

There is a visible lack of awareness about the importance of education among the adults, most of whom think that sending their children to school is not that important because most children are expected to help their parents in household and farm works.

“As the students from the disadvantaged communities reach higher grades, their drop out rate also goes up,” said Gelal.

Dhangadhimai Mayor Hari Narayan Chaudhary said that the municipal office was making efforts to reform the education sector.

“We are going to implement programmes to attract children to community schools,” said Chaudhary.

According to the government data, 25,515 children in Sarlahi, 24,836 in Dhanusha, 22,938 in Rautahat, 21,514 in Parsa, 20,409 in Bara, 13,434 in Saptari, 13,411 in Siraha, and 11,752 children are still deprived of education.

There are more than 300,000 out-of-school children in the country. Around 50 percent of them are in Province 2.