Gender Parity Index: UNESCO

• Gender Parity Index in primary, secondary and tertiary education is the ratio of the number of female students enrolled at primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education to the number of male students in each level.
• In short, GPI at various levels reflect equitable participation of girls in the School system.
• GPI is released by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as a part of its Global Education Monitoring Report.
• A GPI of 1 indicates parity between the sexes; a GPI that varies between 0 and 1 typically means a disparity in favour of males; whereas a GPI greater than 1 indicates a disparity in favour of females.
• India’s GPI for the year 2018-19 at different levels of School Education is as under:
  
  • Primary Education: 1.03
  • Upper Primary Education: 1.12
  • Secondary Education: 1.04
  • Higher Secondary Education: 1.04
• India’s GPI indicates that the number of girls is more than the number of boys at all levels of school Education.
• In 2018-19, the Ministry of Human Resource Development launched the ‘Samagra Shiksha’ scheme. It is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme.
  
  • It is an overarching programme for the school education sector extending from pre-school to class XII and aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education at all levels of school education.
  • One of its objectives is to bridge social and gender gaps in school education.
  • To provide quality education to girls from disadvantaged groups, Kasturba Gandhi BalikaVidyalayas (KGBVs) have been sanctioned in Educationally Backward Blocks (EBBs) under SamagraShiksha.
  • KGBVs are residential schools from class VI to XII for girls belonging to disadvantaged groups such as SC, ST, OBC, Minority and Below Poverty Line (BPL).

Source: PIB