MCDM Approach to Assess Dropping Out of Education by Children: A Study in the Indian Scenario to Take Appropriate Measures for a Sustainable Education System

1. Introduction

In a civilized society, the child rights are assumed to be more significance as the children are human-beings with the right to safe, secured and opportunities for complete development. Through education the important part like human resource of any country can be developed especially by reinforcement of the basic education which has been considered as the way to progress as well as development of individuals. Although different programmes, policies, acts & commissions have been established in Indian context, but the education rights of children are not yet fulfilled. The children are found to be discriminated and dropping out schools because of a number of reasons starting from the families to schools and from schools to societies. In order to universalize the primary educations among the children in the age group of 6 to 14 years, different government policies and plans have been implemented. But, the situations become depressing in almost states of India to achieve universal primary education as the dropout rates are increasing. The children are found to attend primary schools in larger numbers at the beginning which tend to decline in the subsequent years after the completion of primary schools in many countries. Among all recent educational policies initiated in India, the “Right to Education (RTE) Act-2009” that was implemented by the government has called for free & compulsory education to all children up to 14 years of age. For the children with non-completion of their elementary education, this RTE act with an aim of retention rate reduction will provide special provisions for further education (Ministry of Human Resource Development, 2009). Moreover during the year 2001-02, the “Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA)” in India has started to work effectively for providing elementary education to all children. Despite of all these provisions and acts, a large number of children were still found to drop out their schooling in India. Therefore, an attempt was made in the present study to explore the major causes of such education dropping circumstances by the children in the province of Odisha in India.