The government is planning to launch next month a scheme to track the academic performance of school students across the country and also identify the dropouts.

The scheme, which is expected to be launched in the middle of next month, will be called 'Shaala ASMITA', an acronym for All School Monitoring Individual Tracking and Analysis.

Under this online system, data of students from all schools will be collected with the assistance of local and state administrations and their performance will be monitored, HRD ministry officials said.

The scheme will use the Aadhaar number or a specially generated number to track a student's progress, they said.

"The HRD ministry is getting support of the states for this initiative and it is expected that the scheme will be launched next month," the officials said.

The scheme will also help in providing accurate data about schools and better monitoring of different programmes, including the Midday Meal Scheme, they said.

Last month, HRD Minister Smriti Irani had announced that the government is bringing a system to monitor the progress of millions of students across the country and also identify the dropouts.