The Minister of State for Tribal Affairs Bishweswar Tudu on Monday, March 20, was briefing about the percentage of increase in the ratio of Scheduled Tribes students in Lok Sabha. Additionally, Tudu was also briefed about the benefits of the Pre-Matric Scholarship scheme. 

With regards to this, Tudu said, the Pre-Matric Scholarship scheme has been conceptualised with the objective of supporting parents of scheduled tribe students for the education of their wards studying in Classes IX and X so that the incidence of dropout, especially in the transition from elementary to secondary and during the second stage of education is minimised; and to improve participation of ST students in classes IX and X of Pre-Matric stage, so that they perform well and have a better chance of progressing to Post-Matric stages of education, informed Minister of State for Tribal Affairs, as stated in a report by ANI. 

Further, the evaluation study of the Pre-Matric Scholarship conducted by NITI Aayog in 2021 and the Indian Institute of Public Administration(IIPA) in September 2019 has found that the scheme has been successful in achieving its objective. Also, the report of Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) Plus published by the Ministry of Education, shows that Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) for ST students in 2019-20 for Class I to VIII is 102.08, which confirms that the increased enrolment in classes I to VIII is also representative of the Scheduled Tribe populations. Similarly, the GER at Senior Secondary (classes IX-X) level has increased from 62.4 per cent in 2012-13 to 76.7 per cent in 2019-20, the minister added.

Department of Schools Education and Literacy under the Ministry of Education is the nodal Department for providing Universal access to quality education through its autonomous/Statutory bodies, i.e. CBSE, KVS, JNV, NIOS and NCTE and its centrally sponsored scheme of Samagra Shiksha, PM Poshan, PadhnaLikhna Abhiyan and central sector scheme of National Means cum Merit Scholarships.