Enrolment of differently abled dismal in Odisha

Enrolment of differently abled children accounts for a meagre 1.33 per cent of the total children registered with the schools in Odisha in 2011-12, according to government data.

Data of District Information System for Education (DISE) shows that out of 6,519,654 students enrolled during 2011-12, only 86,461 students were differently abled (including 49,588 boys and 36,873 girls). Bhadrak district tops the list accounting for 2.8 per cent of the total students enrolled in the schools during 2011-12. Out of total enrollment of 252,938 students, 7,074 are disabled including 2,404 boys and 4,670 girls. The coastal district is followed by contiguous Balasore district (2.34 per cent), Kendrapada district (2.27 per cent) and Boudh (2.26 per cent). Koraput lies at the bottom among 30 districts in terms of differently abled students going to schools. The share of such students to the total students enrolled in the schools of Koraput in 2011-12 is only 0.59 per cent. Only 1,319 disabled students were enrolled during the year in Koraput against the total enrolment of 224,843 students.

According to the Census-2001, there are 1,021,335 differently abled persons in the state. Of this, children aged between 0-18 years constitute a whopping 32.9 per cent. Similarly, children less than 14 years of age constitute about 24 per cent of the population of the differently abled.

The data was circulated by Unicef on the occasion of the release of 'The State of the World's Children-2013' here.