COMPREHENSIVE FRAMEWORK FOR SCHOOL DROPOUT PREDICTION AND PREVENTION: A CASE STUDY OF SCHOOL DROPOUTS IN RURAL AREAS OF MAHBUBNAGAR DISTRICT OF TELANGANA.

Obtaining quality education is non-negotiable to improve people’s lives. It is fundamental human right and essential for the empowerment and growth. Despite numerous actions for realization of mission ‘Education for All’, however, have been reported high rate of school dropouts in Telangana state and India as well. In 2013-14, about 38.2 per cent of children in the state of Telangana in India who had enrolled in Class I did not reach Class X, thus deprived of schooling. Various studies informed that the negative outcomes of school dropouts for individuals are related to one another and that their causes and the backgrounds of dropouts are knotted. By addressing the signs of school dropouts, not only will students stay in school, but also future problem behaviors could be avoided. This paper attempted to design result framework, comprehensive school dropout prediction framework comprised of seven domains include personal attributes, academic learnings, general deviance, deviant affiliation, family socialization, structural strains and child friendly school environment. At the end of the paper, author also developed self-rating instrument for school management committee and class teacher to use and predict possibilities of school dropouts in their class and reinforce to develop child specific plan of action for ensuring accomplishment of schooling. It is recommended to design series of robust programs to tap capacity gaps among children, families, communities, school functionaries and district officials and improve individual and collective behavioral issues and performance at the institutional level.