Blogs
After 70 years of independence,half of India's children are illiterate.Over 3 million children are living on the streets and over 150 million children are working in factories and mines,despite India's policy of compulsory primary education . And of the 50% that do have access to education , very few are girls.
In 2015 3.7 million eligible girls were out of school and in rural areas girls receive an average of fewer than four years of education. In a country where 21.9% of the population is below its official poverty limit, it does not come as a surprise that poverty is the major obstacle that limits education for girls.
But poverty is not the only thing that is disrupting the fundamental right of education amongst Indian girls there are many more contributing factors such as the distance of schools from the corresponding villages, lack of sanitation facilities in schools, shortage of female teachers, gender bias in curriculum, absence of support from their respective families and this list is never ending.
India has the highest number of child brides in Asia and inevitably there is this dogma surrounding young girls that educating them is a waste of time and money as they are born only to be married off and manage the household. In rural households and especially amongst the poor, the girl child is a valuable resource for housework and in the fields, an additional hand that cannot be wasted away through an education with almost invisible gains and far too heavy a price that most rural and poor families cannot afford to pay.
As a result, a large gender gap emerges which was highlighted in the 2011 census that showed the male literacy rate to be 82.14% while for females it lags behind at 65.46%. Although getting the girl child to enrol in primary schools seems to be most problematic, once enrolled, girl children are more likely to continue their primary education. At the secondary level of education, girls tend to drop out more than boys, again posing a challenge to retain the girl child for secondary education. In our so-called ‘modern India’, estimates show that for every 100 girls in rural India only a single one reaches class 12 and almost 40% of girls leave school even before reaching the fifth standard and more than 15% children in schools can’t read a simple story in Hindi, our national language.
The differences between the positions of men and women in the society will not lessen; leave alone disappear, as long as there are differences between the education levels of men and women. We must realise that going to school is one thing, on the other hand, the quality of education that one gets is another. Within government schools- overcrowded classrooms, absent teacher, unsanitary conditions are common complaints and can cause parents to decide that it is not worth their child going to school. A 2010 report conducted by the National Council for Teacher Education estimated that an additional 1.2 million teachers were needed to fulfil the RTE act requirements and merely 5 % of government schools complied with all the basic standards and infrastructure set by the act. Moreover,40% of classrooms had more than 30 students and over 60% didn’t have any electricity and over 21% of the teachers were not professionally trained. Although much work has been done to improve the state of education in India, we are still a long way off from attaining standards comparable even to other developing nations.
India is ranked 105 amongst 128 countries in its Education for All Development Index. There is much work to be done to enhance education in India; particular attention is warranted to women’s access to education. An attempt has to be made to remove the social, psychological and structural barriers, for the participation of the majority of women in education. Even though the Government and various voluntary organisations are engaged in several attempts to sensitise the local population to the need for women education, unless parents of the girl child see value and merit in sending the girl child to school, they will resist doing so and instead prefer to use her help in household chores or agricultural activities. It is absolutely vital that we incorporate the belief among women that they must stand on their two feet and the only feasible way to achieve this is through education and its proper utilisation. One way to make the families more interested is by making the school come to them rather than sending their girls to school far away from home by implementing more mobile schools across rural India
A MOBILE SCHOOL
There are many NGOs working to ensure the education of girls in rural India . Two such NGOs,which have contributed greatly to the cause of educating girls are Nanhi Kali and Educate Girls :
Project Nanhi Kali:
Project Nanhi Kali is an Indian non-governmental organisation that supports education for underprivileged girls in India. Founded by Anand Mahindra in 1996, it is jointly managed by the Naandi Foundation and the KC Mahindra Education Trust, which is part of the corporate social responsibility activities of the Mahindra Group.Currently, Project Nanhi Kali supports over 57,000 students.
Project Nanhi Kali sees educating girls and women as a way to positively impact India in the long run.Students who are selected for Nanhi Kali receive both financial and academic support. They attend special classes to learn math, science, and language concepts. Nanhi Kali for the hidden costs of their education, including pencils, notebooks, school bags, uniforms, clothes, and shoes.[3] Funding is from individual and corporate donors, who sponsor a particular child and receive regular updates on her progress at school. Sponsors can also go to the online "Girl Store" to purchase particular items for a student.[5] The Mahindra Group sponsors the education of 11,000 girl children through Project Nanhi Kali.[6]
Third-party assessments show that Nanhi Kali has a significant impact on the girls' lives. Over a one-year period, Nanhi Kali students' improvement in learning outcomes ranged from 40 percent in tribal Chhattisgarh to 78 percent in Mumbai.
Educate Girls:
Educate Girls is a non-profit organization in India founded by Safeena Hussain that aims to tackle issues at the root cause of gender inequality in India’s education system. Founded in 2007, the non-governmental organisation has its management and outreach office in Mumbai and operations in 10 districts across Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. Since 2007, Educate Girls has worked with over 12,000 government schools, and the introduction of creative learning and teaching techniques in classrooms has consistently shown increased learning outcomes every year. Since its inception in 2007, the organisation has reached over 4.9 million total beneficiaries, and enrolled close to 200,000 out-of-school girls in school .
Steps taken by the government to ensure the education of girls in India:
Beti Bachao , Beti Padhao Yojana:
Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (translation: Save girl child, educate a girl child) is a social campaign of the Government of India that aims to generate awareness and improve the efficiency of welfare services intended for girls. The scheme was launched with an initial funding of ₹100 crore (US$16 million). It has been the target of fraudsters in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Bihar and Delhi.
Speaking on the occasion of the International Day of the Girl Child in 2014, the Prime Minister,Narendra Modi had called for the eradication of female foeticide and invited suggestions from the citizens of India via the MyGov.in portal.According to census data, the child sex ratio (0–6 years) in India was 927 girls per 1,000 boys in 2001, which dropped to 918 girls for every 1,000 boys in 2011. A 2012 UNICEF report ranked India 41st among 195 countries.
The Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (BBBP) scheme was launched on 22 January 2015 by Modi.It aims to address the issue of the declining child sex ratio image (CSR) and is a national initiative jointly run by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the Ministry of Human Resource Development. It initially focused multi-sector action in 100 districts throughout the country where there was a low CSR.
In 26 August 2016, Olympics 2016 bronze medallist Sakshi Malik was made brand ambassador for BBBP .
