HYDERABAD: School dropout rates among Scheduled Tribes (STs) in Telangana is alarmingly high, with rates for the year 2015-16 at various levels of school education are more than double, compared to other categories, data from the handbook ' Telangana at a Glance-2017' released by the directorate of economics and statistics of Telangana shows. Dropout rate among STs in class 1-5 is 38.53 per cent, while the rate among all the other categories is 16.33 per cent.Proffesor K Laxminarayana, organising secretary of Telangana Save Education Committee said, "The government is shutting down schools in several tribal areas of the state because of low student strength. It is also not providing infrastructure and basic facilities like classrooms, playground and drinking water. Even the teacher strength is very low and in most cases Vidya volunteers teach in these schools. So the tribal students are dropping out despite their gross enrolment ratio being good."Laxminarayana added, "Save education committee members conducted a survey to find out the condition of schools in tribal areas in different districts and submitted a memorandum to the government, but they have no interest in improving the condition of these schools."To make matters worse, Telangana has literacy rate of 66.5 per cent against national average of 72.9 per cent, placing it at 31st position among states and Union Territories.In class 1-8, dropout rate is 52.57 per cent among STs, compared to 29.42 per cent among other categories.However, an official in the tribal welfare department said that the dropout rates among STs are not as high as the data shows. "Due to absence of proper monitoring mechanism, whenever a student leaves the school, he is marked as a dropout. There is no mechanism to find out whether the student has dropped studies or joined another school," said the official.In class 1-10, dropout rate is 61.33 per cent among STs, while it is 36.99 per cent among the others.By Prudhvi Vegesna