Award of Attendance Scholarship to Girl Students in the Middle Stage of Education

What is the Attendance Scholarship for girl students in Puducherry?

The Award of Attendance Scholarship to Girl Students in the Middle Stage of Education is a state-funded scholarship of the Directorate of School Education, Government of Puducherry, running since 2007-08. It pays Rs 200 per annum per student to girls in the middle stage of schooling who maintain exceptionally high attendance.

The Directorate states two objectives for the scheme. The first is to raise the enrolment of girls in schools in the 11 to 14 age group in the middle stage of education. The second is to avoid drop-outs among girl students. The middle stage, roughly classes VI to VIII — is where girls in India have historically left school in the largest numbers, often to take on household work or care for younger siblings, and the scheme is designed to put a small but visible reward against staying and attending.

The distinguishing feature of the scheme is its attendance threshold. Most scholarships in India set an attendance bar at 75 or 80 per cent. This one requires 97 per cent and above in the preceding year. On a 220-day school year, that permits roughly six or seven absences in the whole year. The design is deliberate: the payment is small, so the eligibility condition is what does the work, and it rewards the family that sends the girl every day rather than the family that merely keeps her on the rolls.

The scheme is administered under the Senior Accounts Officer of the Directorate, which also handles the Puducherry State Post Matric Scholarship, the Pre-Matric Scholarship to Other Economically Backward Class students, the NCC cadet scholarships and the scholarships for cadets at the Rashtriya Indian Military College and Sainik School.

Who is eligible for the attendance scholarship?

A girl student can receive the scholarship if:

• She is a citizen of India and belongs to the Union Territory of Puducherry either by birth or by domicile, meaning continuous residence of not less than five years.
• She is a girl student aged 11 to 14 studying in the middle stage of education.
• She is studying in a government, government-aided or government recognised private school in the Union Territory of Puducherry.
• Her annual family income is Rs 75,000 or below.
• Her percentage of attendance in the class in the preceding year is 97 and above.

She is not eligible and cannot apply if:

• She is a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe student. The scheme is written for girl students other than SC and ST, because SC and ST girls are covered by the Adi Dravidar Welfare Department's own Retention Scholarship and the Award of Opportunity Cost to Parents of SC Girl Students, which pays Rs 3,000 per academic year.
• Her annual family income exceeds Rs 75,000.
• Her attendance in the preceding year was below 97 per cent, however good her marks.
• She is outside the 11 to 14 age group, or is not in the middle stage of education.
• She studies in a school that is not government recognised.
• She is not a native of Puducherry and has not completed five continuous years of residence in the Union Territory.
• The applicant is a boy student. The scheme is confined to girls.

What documents are required?

How to apply for the attendance scholarship

1. Ask the class teacher for the attendance figure for the preceding academic year before anything else. The 97 per cent threshold decides the case, and there is no purpose in assembling documents if the attendance falls short.
2. Collect the income certificate and the residence or nativity certificate from the competent revenue authority. These take time to issue and are the most common cause of a missed deadline.
3. Obtain the application form from the school and fill it in with the student's details, the attendance record, the family income and the bank account details.
4. Have the head of the institution verify and sign the application. The Directorate is clear that it receives proposals from heads of institutions, not from parents directly.
5. Let the school submit the proposal to the Directorate of School Education in the Google Form the Directorate circulates for the year. This is the Directorate's stated route for receiving proposals under the scheme.
6. Confirm the bank account is Aadhaar-seeded and active. Payment is made by Direct Benefit Transfer through PFMS, and a dormant or unseeded account will fail the transfer even after sanction.
7. Follow up with the school if the credit has not appeared by the end of the academic year, and with the Directorate on 0413-2207202 if the school cannot trace the proposal.

How the money is paid

The Directorate disburses the scholarship directly into the Aadhaar-seeded viable bank account of the sanctioned or approved beneficiary, by Direct Benefit Transfer through PFMS, the Public Financial Management System used across central and state schemes. No money passes through the school and no cash is handed over.

The amount is Rs 200 per annum, paid once for the year. It is a token recognition rather than a maintenance allowance, and it should be read alongside the much larger in-kind support the same Directorate provides: two sets of uniform, textbooks, note books, footwear, a dictionary in class VIII, a geometry box, an atlas and stationery, all free of cost, to every child from LKG to class XII in government and government-aided schools, plus student bus travel at Re 1 per trip.

Why an eligible student may not receive it

• Attendance falls below 97 per cent. A single week of illness in the preceding year can take a student below the threshold, and the scheme does not provide for medical exemptions in its published rules.
• Funds run out. The Directorate states that it grants the scholarship to all eligible girl students but that this also depends on the availability of funds in that year's budget. Late proposals are the ones most at risk.
• The school does not submit the proposal, or submits it after the Directorate's Google Form has closed for the year.
• The bank account is not Aadhaar-seeded, so the PFMS transfer fails even though the sanction was made.
• The income certificate is out of date or shows income above Rs 75,000.
• The student is SC or ST and should be applying to the Adi Dravidar Welfare Department's schemes instead.
• A name mismatch between the school record, the Aadhaar record and the bank account.

Related schemes a Puducherry girl student should check

A girl student in the middle stage whose family income is low is usually eligible for more than the attendance scholarship alone. The Directorate of School Education runs the Pre-Matric Scholarship to Other Economically Backward Class Students and the Puducherry State Post Matric Scholarship Scheme, and nominates students for the National Means-cum-Merit Scholarship Scheme, which is a far larger award for students who clear the NMMS examination in class VIII.

A Scheduled Caste girl student in the same classes should apply instead to the Adi Dravidar Welfare Department, which pays the Award of Pre-matric Scholarship to SC students at Rs 1,500 per year from class VI to VIII and Rs 2,500 per year in classes IX and X with no income limit, the Award of Opportunity Cost to Parents of SC Girl Students at Rs 3,000 per academic year for daughters in classes VI to XII, and the Retention Scholarship for SC and ST girl students.

Where the girl's father or mother is a registered construction worker, the Puducherry Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board pays its own educational assistance to the wards of beneficiaries.

Where to raise a grievance

Questions about the attendance scholarship go to the Directorate of School Education, Government of Puducherry on 0413-2207202 or by email at dse-edn@py.gov.in. The Web Information Manager for the Directorate's website is the Director of School Education.

There is no application fee for this scholarship, and no agent or middleman is involved at any stage.

How to check your application status

This scheme has no independent online tracking portal for a student or parent to log into. The proposal moves from the school to the Directorate of School Education as a batch, through the Google Form the Directorate circulates each year, so the checks that actually work are these.

• Ask the class teacher or head of the institution first. The school holds the proposal record and is the party that submitted it to the Directorate, so it is usually the fastest source of an answer on whether a name was included in that year's batch.
• Confirm the bank account status rather than a portal status. Since payment is by Direct Benefit Transfer through PFMS, the practical sign that a case has gone through is the Rs 200 credit itself. If the credit has not appeared by the end of the academic year, that is the point to escalate, not before, since disbursal is normally processed together for all sanctioned students in a school.
• Call the Directorate of School Education on 0413-2207202 if the school is unable to trace the proposal or confirm its status. Keep the student's name, class, school and the academic year ready before calling, since the Directorate handles several scholarship schemes through the same office.
• Write to dse-edn@py.gov.in for a written follow-up if the phone line does not resolve the query, quoting the same details.
• Do not expect an SMS or email acknowledgement at the time of submission. The scheme runs on an annual school-wise batch process, not an individual online application with a tracking ID, so silence between submission and the end-of-year credit is normal and is not by itself a sign of rejection.