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# Increasing Girls' Enrollment in India

Most school-age children who have never attended school or who dropped out early belong to families with limited assets and income, who tend to be lower in the caste and occupational hierarchy. Their parents tend to be illiterate or semiliterate, with low educational achievement. In rural India, girls are more likely to drop out of school early if they come from families with little or no land and few resources -- such as agricultural laborers, small farmers, and artisans. Their urban counterparts live mainly in the slums. Parents keep children from school primarily so the children can work and contribute to the family, but also because of the direct costs of education. No school fees are charged, but expenses for clothes, uniforms, books, and other materials can be substantial, especially for poor families. Girls tend to be withdrawn from school sooner than boys. The 1981 census suggests that there were about 13.6 million working children aged 5-14, but these data cover wage-earning children and probably exclude most children who work as domestic workers or at other marginal economic activities. The census indicates that 24 percent of girls aged 11-13 years in rural areas and 9 percent in urban areas are in the work force. -- Hardly any children in the work force attend school. Moreover, children especially girls -- contribute their labor to the family. In Rajasthan, younger girls worked an average 5.5 hours and older girls 7.7 hours daily in the family, compared to 1.8 hours and 3.6 hours for boys.

The Indian government has adopted a policy favoring incentives to improve the enrollment of students from poorer socioeconomic groups, with a small bias in favor of girls. It has recommended providing free uniforms, textbooks, and paper, and offering attendance incentives. Free uniforms are provided to students in about 12 percent of primary schools and 9 percent of middle schools; free textbooks in 13 percent of primary and 16 percent of middle schools; and midday meals in 27 percent of primary and 17 percent of middle schools. So far, incentives programs have been limited and like the design or existence of programs, vary greatly, state-by-state. The most extensively studied programs are the midday meal program in Orissa and Tamil Nadu, which did not conclusively increase girls' attendance. A review of midday meal programs in 12 states found that they increased girls' attendance but that the impact on retention rates was unclear. These programs did improve the supply of food to school-age populations. Other incentive programs reportedly increased the attendance of children from poorer groups but may not be replicable because of cost. Some small programs to provide day care for younger children reportedly increased the school attendance of older girls who would otherwise have had to care for younger siblings. The need to provide more female teachers to increase the enrollment of girls has been emphasized, but fewer than one-third of all primary and middle school teachers are women, and the proportion is lower in most states with low female elementary school participation. The proportion of women among new teachers increased from about 25 percent in 1951-56 to about 64 percent in 1976-81. The government is applying qualification standards more flexibly and expanding training for female teachers.

Source: Kurrien 1988