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Indian migrant children at an Aide et Action learning centre in Hyderabad Picture:

Over the last two years, G. Prakash Raj, a charity worker from India鈥檚 Tamil Nadu state, has received hundreds of yellow postcards. Each reads the same.

Sent by a migrant child, the postcard informs Raj that the聽child is safely back home and, more importantly, back in school.

The postcard programme was launched in Tamil Nadu in 2014 as聽a way of tracking the education of some of the more than 10聽million children who are estimated to migrate with their聽families to different parts of India every year.

鈥淲hen they are at work sites with their parents, we try and聽ensure they get basic access to education,鈥� said Raj, who works聽for , a non-governmental group which is聽collaborating with the education department to keep migrant聽children in school.

鈥淲hen they head back to their villages six months later,聽they need to go back to school. Tracking that has been a big聽challenge,鈥� he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.聽聽聽

Under the Indian Right to Education Act, every child between聽the age of four and 16 should be enrolled in school 鈥� but聽government data shows up to six million children aged between聽six and 13 are out of school in India.

Under the postcard programme, the first to track the聽education of migrant children across state borders, migrant聽families working in Tamil Nadu are given a postcard when they聽head home.

They are required to get it signed and stamped by the聽principal of the village school and send it back to Aide et聽Action.

鈥淚n the postcard, the principal writes back to us saying聽that the child has been enrolled back in school. It鈥檚 just a聽note but we are able to track a child鈥檚 academics through it,鈥澛爏aid an official at education department, requesting anonymity.

Last year, 547 postcards were sent back with migrant聽families from areas around Chennai and 495 came back saying that聽the children had been successfully enrolled in school.

To ensure the children are back in school, volunteers聽working with the education department travel to the home states聽and cross check enrollment.

Families who do not send back a postcard are traced back to聽their villages and counselled to enroll their children in聽school.

In Tamil Nadu, most migrants tracked are from the eastern聽Indian state of Orissa.

The success of the postcard programme has prompted similar聽initiatives in other migration hubs across India, including in聽the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh.

Although India鈥檚 law allows children to go to any school in聽the country, an education department official said that a聽language barrier kept many migrant children out of school.

India, a country of 1.2 billion people, has 22 official聽languages and dozens more that are spoken across its 29 states.

鈥淲e are fixing that slowly,鈥� said the official, who declined聽to be named. 鈥淲e are bringing people and books from home states聽to help the children in a language they are familiar with.鈥�

The , the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, covers humanitarian news, women鈥檚 rights, corruption and climate change.