Girl Child Still hard to get education
One out of six teacher posts in govt schools is vacant, which means there is a collective shortage of about 10 lakh teachers. At the same time, 55 percent of India's 2,600 lakh school children go to govt schools. About 1,800 schools are still running under trees or in tents in the country.
Amit Baijnath Garg, Senior Journalist-Writer
Slogans like “Beti Padhao-Beti Bachao” reached the villages, but education did not reach. In a country where education is a fundamental right of children, it is a matter of shame to have 8 girls out of every 10 illiterate children. Rural girls struggle for education; even after they start going to school, their circumstances and family play an important role in their removal. 78 lakh children of the country have to earn along with studies, while 8.4 crore children are still deprived of schools. Various reports say that the worst situation in terms of education is in UP where the education has not been reached to 16 lakh children.
According to the report released by the Ministry of Human Development in 2013, every year around 23 lakh students in the country drop out of school by the time of 5th standard. Almost a 3rd of govt schools do not have toilet facilities for girls, which is why they drop out. It is more important to emphasize on the education and health of girls, because more than 22 lakh girls are married at an early age. In such a situation, it is natural for them to drop out of school. Some govt schools in rural areas have high student numbers, leading to a worsening of the student-teacher ratio. 18 percent posts of teachers in primary schools and 15 percent posts in secondary schools are lying vacant across the country.
According to the report of the Sample Registration System Baseline Survey, about 16 percent of girls in the age group of 15 to 17 years drop out of school. In this respect, Gujarat is one of the most backward states of the country. Here 26.6 percent of girls aged 15 to 17 drop out of school. In Chhattisgarh, 90.1 percent of girls aged 15 to 17 years go to school, while in Assam this figure is 84.8 percent. Bihar is also not far behind the national average. Here the figure is 83.3 percent. In Jharkhand 84.1 percent, in Madhya Pradesh 79.2 percent, in UP 79.4 percent and in Odisha 75.3 percent of girls don’t reach the high school. If we talk about the education of 10 to 14 years girls, then Gujarat comes in the lowest five states.
About 12 million Indian children are married before the age of 10. Of these, 65 percent are underage girls, and 8 out of every 10 illiterate children who are married are girls. There are at least 1,403 women who never went to school for every 1,000 men. Five states Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Maharashtra have the highest female literacy rates. Kerala has the highest educated female population in India. Through Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, the number of school going children has increased. After the enactment of the Right to Education Act, there has been an increase in enrollment for primary education. The number of out-of-school children is also steadily declining. In 2009, this number in the age group of 6 to 13 years was about 8 million, while five years later, i.e. in 2014, it came down to 60 lakh. In 2014, about 20 million out of 74 million children between the ages of 3 and 6, were not attending any kind of pre-school.
At the time of independence, the female literacy rate at the national level was only 8.6 percent, but according to the 2011 census, it was recorded at 65.46 percent. The Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) in schools for girls was 24.8 percent at the primary level, while it was just 4.6 per cent at the upper primary level (aged 11-14 years). After the 50s, attention was paid to the women education. The female literacy rate stood at 49.69 percent as against the male rate of 46.32 percent. Female literacy increased faster than that of males 3 decades after independence. In the year 1971 it was 22 percent i.e. the growth rate was 11.72 percent compared to the previous time.
During the period from 2000 to 2005, the drop-out rate among girls declined by 16.5 percent. Kerala has the highest female literacy rate of 92 percent, while it is only 52.7 percent in Rajasthan, the lowest in India. The female literacy rate is 59.3 percent in the densely populated states of UP and 53.3 percent in Bihar. The female literacy status is good in Lakshadweep, Mizoram, Tripura and Goa.
