The Programme Was Shut Down After Three Months. Fifty-Four of the Sixty Boys Still Got Into School

Children outside school are not idle. That is precisely the problem.

Many of the boys identified for the bridge course were working - shepherding, tending cattle, domestic labour. Poverty made their contribution matter to the household, and years away from a classroom made walking into an age-appropriate one much harder.

A residential bridge course began at Girijapuri Colony for sixty non-school-going and dropout boys, designed as a nine-month pathway through the state education system to prepare them for formal schooling. The learning methods were child-friendly and corporal punishment was prohibited - not a detail, for children whose earlier experience had not taught them to trust a classroom.

Then a Government of India circular closed this category of programme under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. The centre ended in March 2009, three months in.

That disruption could have put the children straight back into the gap between work and school.

Instead, families, educators and the nearby government schools completed a shortened transition. Fifty-four of the sixty boys were admitted to government primary schools in Matehi, Bijay Nagar, Jangal Gulariha and Bichhia.

DEHAT ran the bridge environment, supported the educators in non-punitive methods, worked with families and connected the boys to the schools. The children did the compressed learning. Their families allowed a transition away from work. The public schools took the admissions.

Nobody knows how long all fifty-four stayed, and this should not be read as completion. What it shows is that a programme cut short by policy did not simply close its doors. Nine in ten participants left it holding a place in the public system - which is what protection through restoration of a right actually looks like.

A programme cut short by policy did not simply close its doors.