ABSTRACT
The Right of Children for Free and Compulsory Education Act (2009; RTE Act) has several entitlements guaranteed to children as a fundamental right. Each of the entitlements is to be enjoyed unfailingly by every child in the country in the six to fourteen years age group. Most important, every child has to be in enrolled in school and retained until completion of class VIII or elementary education. Although there are claims that 98 per cent of children are already enrolled, this statistic is irrelevant if children are not attending schools regularly or are school dropouts. This chapter examines the magnitude of the problem of retention of children in schools based on the statistics of the department of education in the state of Andhra Pradesh (AP) and attempts to categorise them along districts that are doing well and those that are not performing. It also tries to understand the trends in retention of children in schools age-wise and gender-wise.
