| Krishnagiri district in Tamil Nadu is setting an example in tackling primary school dropouts. With the help of technology and nearly 10,000 volunteers, the district is getting the dropouts back to school. Using software aptly named, back2school, developed by Chennai-based Arbiter, the district administration monitors each schoolgoing child daily. And the results are showing: 8,000 of the 8,867 school dropouts are back in school. The project is the brainchild Krishnagiri's district collector Santhosh Babu. Every time, a school reports a child abstaining for even a day, a reminder pops up on Babu's computer. Immediately, the root of the problem, which is usually family debt forcing children to work, is analysed and sorted out so that nothing comes between the children and their education. A major success story is in Undiyalnatham, a remote village from where 25 children missed classes for a good part of the year. On enquiry, it was found that these children belonging to the Irular tribe worked as 'watchmen' in Andhra Pradesh, which has been their livelihood for generations. These 25 children, the first generation of their tribe to get formal education, are now back in school. The method is simple. Every time a child is absent, the class teacher reports it to the headmaster, who in turn reports this to a volunteer, who then updates the collector's office through a computer in the local panchayat. This is how Babu gets the alert on his computer. Representatives of the NGO Sarva Siksha Abhiyan and the Unicef then solve the specific problems, which sometimes involve clearing family debt. The money comes from the district administration. The effort involves a 10,000-Village Volunteer Force (VVF) consisting of child volunteers, panchayat presidents and headmasters of the 1,700-odd schools in the district. "The VVF members will keep going around the villages and collect data about students missing from the classroom. The volunteer is picked from the same village so that she is familiar with the child's history," Babu said. He hopes to achieve 100 per cent attendance by the year-end. The objective is to ensure that every child in the district passes at least the 10th so that s/he will be ready to work in rural BPO centres. | 
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