Visakhapatnam: In a bid to check the increasing number of dropouts from government schools, a residential coaching programme called ‘Gnyanadhara’ will be launched across the state from May 1 to 30. Vizianagaram collector Vivek Yadav held a meeting with district education officials on the issue on Friday and asked them to ensure that there are no more dropouts in the district in future.The collector said 56 venues across the district have been selected to host the programme, which will help students moving from class V to VI, and from class IX to X, to cope with the growing syllabus. It is mainly targeted at students who have not done well in their internal exams (summit 1/quarterly exams).A total number of 18,400 students have been identified for the month-long programme — 14,240 from 306 high schools and the remaining 4,160 from the 1,600 odd primary schools. Sources in the education department said roughly 40 students (moving to class X) from every government high school will be picked for the refresher programme which will be conducted by 470 teachers.Yadav asked the authorities to completely check the dropouts from schools, both from primary and higher classes, and urged the teachers to ensure that students are thoroughly trained and their doubts cleared during the month-long programme. Talking to TOI, district education officer G Nagamani said: “We have been told to identify the students’ weak areas and focus on clearing their basics, so that they can understand the concepts before moving to the higher classes.” He added that the centres that will host the programme “will be identified in the next two-three days”.In Visakhapatnam district, 28,000 students have been identified for the programme out of which 4,431 students are those moving from class V to VI, while 23,583 students moving from class IX to X have been identified for the same. A total number of 69 centres have been set up in the district, where 1,380 teachers will conduct the programme.“We have a total 77 centres in the district, with 20,000-plus students having been identified. Out of these, 3,200 are from primary schools and 17,000 are from the high schools. The number of teachers allocated are 1,200,” said Srikakulam DEO M Sai Ram.

Stay updated with all the Latest Visakhapatnam headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.