An estimation of the level of drop-out from some socio-economic & cultural factors along with their discriminatory nature

Given the education is the basic amenity of a social life to earn the bread and to add a philanthropic meaning to an entity, its alarming rate of erosion through drop-outs poses a threat to the educational planner and policy maker. District Cooch Behar of West Bengal has well been envisaged to be an endemic zone of high drop-out level. While the district is undergoing District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) since 1997 and Sarva Shiksha Avijaan (SSA) from 2002, a study of Cooch Behar Block I and Block II did reveal that health hazards of the school going children, communication to school, social taboo, physical facility available in the school, engagement in family labour, age at drop-out and education of mother were of prime concern in addressing the problem of high drop-out of school children (5–10 age group) at the primary schools. The discriminatory studies (Mahalanobish D2 statistics) further revealed that out of 15 variables studies taboo, age at drop-outs and education of mother had played the pivots to discriminate between the high and low level of drop-out among the children of the study area.