Model Gujarat's 24% girls in age-group 15-16 don't attend school, higher than 17 states; national average 16%: ASER

The 11th Annual Status of Education Report (ASER 2016), released in Delhi, has revealed that Gujarat, a model state for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, remains one of the poorest performers in enrolling girls in rural schools, both at upper primary and secondary level.
Exploding the myth that Gujarat has made strides in school education under Modi, who ruled the state between 2001 and 2014, the report has found that out of 21 major states, just three (Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) have a higher out of school girls in the age group 15-16 than Gujarat.
At 23.5%, Gujarat’s out of school girls in this age group is higher than several of the backward states such as Odisha (19.2%), Chhattisgarh (18.4%), Jharkhand (14.3%), Assam (12%) and Bihar (11.3%). The national average, the report, which is based on rural household surveys across India, is 16.1%.
ASER oes not find things any better for rural boys’ enrollment in the age group 15-16. Here, too, of 21 major states, just three (Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh) have a higher percent of out of school children than Gujarat (18.7%). The national average on this score is 14.6%.

What is equally distressing is that, in the age group 11-14, or in upper primary, Gujarat is found to have higher percent of out of school girls, 4.9%, than all major states except four – Jharkhand 5.7%, Madhya Pradesh 8.5%, Rajasthan 9.7%, and Uttar Pradesh 9.9%. Better performing states include Bihar 4.4%, Assam 4.1%, and Chhattisgarh 3.7%,
The ASER survey was carried out in 17,473 villages of nearly all rural district of India, covering 3,50,232 households and 5,62,305 children in the age group 3-16. At the all India level, the report finds, the enrollment increased a little for all age groups between 2014 and 2016, from 96.7% in 2014 to 96.9% in 2016.
Comparing government and private schools, the report finds that at the all India level, the proportion of children (age 6-14) enrolled in primary schools remained almost unchanged at 30.5% in 2016, as compared to 30.8% in 2014.
“The gender gap in private school enrollment has decreased slightly in both the 7-10 and the 11-14 age group”, the report says, adding, “In 2014, among children age 11-14, the gap between boys' and girls' enrollment in private school was 7.6 percentage points. In 2016, this gap had decreased to 6.9 percentage points.”
As for government schools, the report says, two states show significant increases in government school enrollment relative to 2014 levels. In Kerala, the proportion of children (age 11-14) enrolled in government school increased from 40.6% in 2014 to 49.9% in 2016. In Gujarat, this proportion increased from 79.2% in 2014 to 86% in 2016.

At the same time, the report says, two major states show substantial increases since 2014 in private school enrollment among children in the elementary school age group (age 6-14) -- Uttarakhand (from 37.5% to 41.6%) and Assam (from 17.3% to 22%).
Giving a detailed analysis of reading ability of children, the report states, “Nationally, the proportion of children in Std III who are able to read at least Std I level text has gone up slightly, from 40.2% in 2014 to 42.5% in 2016.”
“This proportion shows substantial increases among children in government schools in many states: Punjab, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Telangana. All these states show an improvement of more than 7 percentage points since 2014”, it adds.
---
Download full report HERE

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog