Social Justice
Girls Drop Out of Higher Education
- 07 Sep 2019
- 2 min read
A recent study titled ‘Educating the Girl Child: Role of Incentivisation and other enablers and disablers’, done by CRY (Child Rights and You - a Non-Government Organization) has highlighted few reasons behind girls dropping out of higher secondary schools.
- The study, across the four States of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat and Haryana, is based on 3,000 interviews in 1,604 households .
Reasons Behind Dropouts
- Early Marriage, owing to fear of elopement/love affair.
- Parents being worried about physical security of girls stepping out for higher education.
- Predetermined gender roles:
- Not having a female teacher in school keeps some of the girls away from the school.
- Household Chores discourage girls from going to school.
- Poor roads and lack of transport facilities are also disincentives, in some states.
- Menstruation appear as another reason for missing school.
- All schools do not have running water and hand-washing facilities.
- Cost of education and child labour are the other two reasons.
- People being unaware of government schemes such as Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao.
- The study also revealed that many girls have not been able to avail the schemes due to delay in distribution of scheme benefits and other factors like stringent eligibility criteria and conditionalities, complex processes to avail the benefits, and mismatch of the scheme benefits with the requirements of girls and their families.
Suggestions
- An enabling environment, self-motivation or motivation by parents and community inspired the girls to go to school.
- People need to be made aware of different government schemes.
