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The New Segregation Reflections on Gender and Equity in Primary Education
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This article, based on a desk review of the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) and qualitative micro studies in six states - Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Tamil Nadu - attempts to capture the impact of primary education programmes on the ground. Introducing the emergent concept of 'hierarchies of access' to describe the new segregation occurring in primary education, the article focuses on the micro studies documenting the tangible and intangible dimensions of gender and social equity that frame the implementation of DPEP at the village and panchayat level. On the basis of the findings of the desk review and the micro studies, the authors discuss ways to reverse the trend of segregation so as to make universal primary education a substantive reality.
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... Evidence indicated that it is the poor who access government school, and SC/ST populations are among the poorest. Further, Vimala Ramachandran and Aarti Saihjee (2002) discuss "among the poor, it is the most disadvantaged and those living in remote habitations who opt for alternative schools (p. 1604)." ...
... His socialization, which has been proudly internalized through one of the dominant groups in the region, has pervasively influenced his teaching behavior on the school premises. Ramachandran and Saihjee (2002) point out that, the "elimination of gender, caste and community bias inside the classrooms, especially among teachers, remains a challenge. The bias persists and is reflected in the attitudes of teachers and even educational administrators towards children from first-generation learner families. ...
Access to primary education is often interpreted as access to school education, resources inside and outside the school, the way different children are treated by teachers and peers, and even access to distinct types of schools. However, different resources are not accessible to all members of a particular social system based on their intersectional identities. The intersection of identities may be gender, caste, class, region, religion, race, and age group in the context of Assam located in the North Eastern Region of India. Further, 'access' is a 'socio-cultural' construct that involves selection and multiple interpretations. Access to primary education is linked to the socioeconomic, political, and cultural identity of an individual or a group of individuals. It is against this backdrop that this article attempts to understand the experiences and interpretations of access to primary education from an intersectional perspective. The study is based on the in-depth personal interviews with students, teachers, and parents (in total, 75 respondents) in Kamrup district of Assam, located in the North Eastern Region of India, to understand differing perspectives on access to primary education, which reflect their socioeconomic, cultural, and political locales. Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2023 11:23:38AM via IIT Guwahati
... Agrawal (2014) highlights that rural regions face higher dropout rates due to economic constraints and limited access to quality education. Gender disparities also play a crucial role, as girls, particularly in rural areas, often leave school prematurely due to socio-cultural norms, early marriage, and household responsibilities (Ramachandran and Saihjee, 2002). Caste and social group dynamics also play a significant role. ...
School dropout rates in India remain a critical issue, particularly when
examined across different geographical regions. This article delves the geographical
perspective of school dropouts in India, by highlighting the variations across states,
urban-rural divides, gender-inequality, and social differences. It also explores the
educational correlates to school dropout rates in India. The article utilized data
from Unified District Information on School Education Plus (UDISE+) and the
National Sample Survey (NSS)-75th round conducted from July 2017 to June
2018. The Descriptive statistics and the Pearson correlation Coefficient have been
used to analyse the data. The results indicate that the north-eastern and eastern state such as Assam, Bihar, Meghalaya, Orrisa and West Bengal reporting the highest dropout figures conversely southern states Tamil Nadu and Kerala shows lesser dropouts. Although dropout rates are decreasing over time, but rural areas still have higher dropout rates than urban areas. Gender disparities are also evident, with girls being more probable to drop out than boys. Children from Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) are disproportionately affected by higher dropout rates. Furthermore, states with a higher percentage of individuals with secondary or higher levels of education, states with more years spent in formal education, state with high age specific attendance ratio (14-23 age groups), states with higher per- person educational expenditure, and states having better access to internet facilities and easy accessibility to schools are significantly negatively correlated with dropout rates. The article recommends region-specific multifaceted policies that improve school infrastructure, accessibility, and quality education and financially supporting marginalized groups. Key actions include strengthening government initiatives, expanding digital education in remote areas, and raising community awareness to ensure more children complete their education.
... The rapid expansion of private schooling is one of the important drivers of stratification in schools in developing countries, including India (Verger, BonaL, and Zancajo 2016;Baum, Abdul-Hamid, and Wesley 2018). While some emphasise cost-effectiveness of private schools (Muralidharan and Sundararaman 2015;Kingdon 2020), there is a realisation that increasing presence of private schools has led to the most disadvantaged to remain in government schools, and has reaffirmed the relationship of caste, class and gender with educational choice and quality (Ramachandran and Saihjee 2002;Harma 2009). Concerns about what this means for equality of opportunity, socio-economic mobility and the creation of an inclusive society have been highlighted across a body of literature (Desai, Adams, and Dubey 2010;Little 2010;Nambissan 2012;Smith and Joshi 2016). ...
Can a mandate for inclusive school education translate into reality? What challenges can undermine it in the context of a stratified schooling system? We discuss this in the context of India's landmark Right to Education Act. A controversial clause of the Act mandates that private schools should reserve at least 25 percent of entry-level seats for disadvantaged sections of the society. This paper, drawing on a detailed survey of 1642 households, and interactions with parents over 2014–2019, unpacks the experiences of households who applied for admission in private schools through the mandate. Our results suggest that more resourceful households (in terms of ability to speak official language, wealth and education) are more likely to apply, and get admissions through the mandate. Acquiring eligibility documents (proofs for income and residence) is a major hurdle in completing the application process. Even after being allotted a seat, households continue to face several barriers that make it difficult for them to secure an admission and enrol or continue sending their child to the private school through the mandate. The results are sobering, and flag the possibility that transformative potential of the mandate may not be fully realised if the status quo prevails.
Through a comparative analysis of policy texts from UN organisations and scholarly work since the 1990s this paper examines how mothers are portrayed in simplistic terms, as educated thus beneficial for their daughters’ schooling, or deprived of education causing detriment to their daughters’ future prospects. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with mothers from rural Pakistan, these global comparisons are brought into conversation with local narratives showing how mothers’ aspirations facilitate daughters’ educational opportunities. It is argued that mothers’ subjectivities have a potential to inform global policy discourses for investigating the aspirational and transformational potential of mothers in contexts of material and social constraint. The paper proposes an informed approach to educational research and policy making which seeks to understand the processes surrounding mothers’ support for their daughters’ education.
School dropout is a major hindrance in attaining the goals of education in India. From time to time several policy pronouncements have been made, but it's not yielding the desired outcome. Over a decade, the dropout rates for both boys and girls are reflecting a decreasing trend. Several reports reveal that more boys are now dropping out of schools, mainly at the primary level. As per a Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) report, the rate of dropout for boys in primary classes was 1.7 percent and that of girls was 1.2 percent. Similarly, the rate of dropout for boys in secondary classes was 18.3 percent which is higher than that of girls with 16.3 percent (TOI, Jul 2, 2021). In this context, attempts have been made to study the patterns of boys' dropouts and to explore the nature of relationships among different familial and institutional factors with dropouts. This paper is based on the empirical study carried out in one of the most backward districts of West Bengal. A questionnaire on the school dropout factors having 24 items was designed and administered among 93 respondents. The items of the questionnaire were identified through a review of the extant literature. Frequency distribution and ordinal logistic regression were used to analyse the data. Results indicate that key determinants of dropouts are expiry of breadwinner, household works, personal health problems, lack of interest and failure in examinations in studies.
India has seen rapid privatization and marketization in the field of education since 1990s which has impacted the access to better educational opportunities for underprivileged sections of the society. It is argued that schools should be allowed to run on market principle where the parents have the freedom to ‘voice’ and ‘exit’ if they are not happy with the school. The paper based on an exploratory study tries to capture the dynamic of low-fee private schooling market and the experiences of parents sending their children to these schools in a low-income unauthorized colony of Delhi. The paper utilizes Hirschman’s concept of ‘voice’ and ‘exit’ which says that in a marketplace consumers can raise their ‘voice’ to demand ‘quality’ improvement in a product or service or else they can ‘exit’ to understand parental decision-making in private schooling market. The finding of the study suggests that underprivileged parents lack the agency to raise their ‘voice’ to improve the level of education in a private schooling market, and ‘exit’ is the only option for them. It can also be said that there are serious implications of marketization of education for the underprivileged sections of the society, and it leads to exacerbate the existing educational inequalities.KeywordsMarketChoiceVoice and exitCasteUnderprivileged sectionsPrivate schoolsFamilyLow income
Madhya Pradesh, the country's second-largest state by area, is located in the center of the
country, spanning latitudes 21.2°N to 26.81°N and longitudes 74.69° to 82.10° east longitudes. The
Cancer Tropic runs across the center of the state. With an increase of 8.8 million people in the 72.6
million population, According to the 2011 Population Census of Madhya Pradesh (C-13), the state had a
population of over a million people. In 2017, the population was over 81.4 million, making it the sixth
most populous state in the country. Six percent of the country's population is from this region.
Absolutely, Madhya Pradesh is an agrarian state. The scheduled tribe’s population in Madhya Pradesh
has reached 15,316,784 in 2011 with a growth of 210% in the four decades (Vishal D. Pajankar, 2016).
Based on a case study of the 'Shiksha Karmi Scheme' of Madhya Pradesh which aimed to transform the school teacher, this paper argues that the transformation of the teacher may be much more an issue of his/her working conditions, ie, motivation, skill development, school atmosphere, incentive system, supervision, etc,than recruitment policies. Despite transferring;the administration of schools to the panchayats, the scheme has failed to generate in parents and the panchayats an active demand in terms of supervising and supporting the school, taking an interest in the teaching-learning process and thinking about educational issues. This relative passivity of parents and panchayats, despite decentralisation and community central of schools, do not augur significant change for the school system and the teacher as yet.
There are wide variations in educational attainment and literacy rates across the regions and social classes of India. A national project examined participation in and the quality of elementary education in nine states of India, focusing on rural areas and the situation of disadvantaged persons, especially girls and the scheduled castes and tribes. Data from the census and national surveys were complemented by household surveys conducted in 95 villages chosen to highlight contrasts in features of interest. The surveys covered family structure and socioeconomic characteristics, attitudes toward education for boys and girls, reasons for non-enrollment and dropout, household educational expenditures, proximity to and condition of school facilities, teacher characteristics, and state educational expenditures. The 10 chapters are: (1) "Introduction" (A. Vaidyanathan, P. R. Gopinathan Nair); (2) "Access to Primary Education: Rural Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh" (Sarthi Acharya); (3) "Education of Rural Children in UP Himalayas" (Anuradha Pande); (4) "Poverty, Gender and Schooling: A Study of Two Districts in Andhra Pradesh" (N. Krishnaji); (5) "Dynamics of Educational Development: A Case Study of Selected 'Backward' Villages in Kerala" (Joseph A. Thomas); (6) "Demand for and Access to Schooling in Tamil Nadu" (Malathy Duraisamy); (7) "Access to Basic Education in Rural Uttar Pradesh" (Ravi Srivastava); (8) "Educational Opportunities in Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu: Despair and Hope" (Manabi Majumdar); (9) "Education of Marginalised Social Groups in Bihar" (M. K. Jabbi, C. Rajyalakshmi); (10) "Social Diversity and Regional Disparities in Schooling: A Study of Rural Rajasthan" (Geetha B. Nambissan); and (11) "Inequality of Access to Elementary Education in Orissa: An Inter- and Intra-spatial Analysis" (Sailabala Debi). (Contains references in each chapter, 226 data tables, an index, and author profiles). (SV)
Equity in Education? Schooling of Dalit Children in IndiaIdentity, Exclusion and the Education of Tribal Communities’ in Rekha Wazir (ed) The Gender Gap in Basic Education: NGOs as Change AgentsSocial Diversity and Regional Dis-parity in Schooling: A Study of Rural Rajasthan
- Nambissan
- Geeta
Nambissan, Geeta (1996): ‘Equity in Education? Schooling of Dalit Children in India’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XXXI, Nos 16 and 17, April 20-27. –(2000): ‘Identity, Exclusion and the Education of Tribal Communities’ in Rekha Wazir (ed) The Gender Gap in Basic Education: NGOs as Change Agents, Sage Publications, New Delhi. –(2001): ‘Social Diversity and Regional Dis-parity in Schooling: A Study of Rural Rajasthan’ in A Vaidyanathan and P R Gopi-athan Nair (eds) Elementary Education in Rural India – A Grass Roots View, Sage Publications, New Delhi
Elementary Education and Health in Rural India – Some Indicators Sites of Change – The Structural Context for Women's Empowerment in India
- Abusaleh Shariff
- Ratna Sudarshan
Shariff, Abusaleh and Ratna Sudarshan (1996):
'Elementary Education and Health in Rural
India – Some Indicators' in N Rao, L Rurup
and R Sudarshan (eds) Sites of Change – The
Structural Context for Women's Empowerment
in India, New Delhi, FES and UNDP.