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Reducing Out of School Children in India: Lessons from a Micro Study
Abstract
Throughout the world ensuring formal education to all children has been an area of lively debate for about a decade with many different viewpoints on the issue. Sadly, Universalisation of Elementary Education is still a distant prospect in substantial parts of the globe, including India. Under such circumstances, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) was launched in India in 2001 to extend useful and quality elementary education to all children in the age group of 6-14 years before the end of 2010. It has been able to bring the children to school but has failed to retain them and high incidence of drop out emerges to be the most critical problem facing the Indian education scenerio. The present paper explores the trends in school drop out, reasons behind leaving schools, how programmes and policies have fared in reducing school drop-out, and how to make these policies more effective. To bring to light factors that push children out of school and thereby suggest policies, we have undertaken a Field Survey in selected rural areas of West Bengal. Low level of income emerges to be the most crucial factor responsible for the incidence of out of school children. Other factors include insufficient educational infrastructure, lucrative earning opportunities for the children, lack of consciousness among the parents etc. It seems that time has come to refocus and reorient the operation of SSA, transforming it from an infrastructure based approach to a facilitating approach. A targeted approach should be taken whereby different policies should be formed for retention of different age-groups of children in schools. The gender and regional dimension should also be taken into consideration and policies must reflect local socio-economic conditions. A concerted approach with economic growth, poverty eradication and expansion of elementary education going hand in hand is the need of the hour.
... The participation of female children was found to be 15 per cent higher when the midday meal was provided in school than when it was not. Among the other factors responsible for low enrolment and retention of students in schools is lack of school infrastructure, absence of schools, the distance of schools, lack of facilities in schools, lack of teachers, teachers' accountability, curriculum, teaching methodology and lack of motivation (Mukherjee, 2011). Based on the 'Young Lives Study on Quality of Schooling in Andhra Pradesh', Singh and Bangay (2014) discovered that before making choice, parents seek a range of advice about schools and consult their neighbours about the quality of schools before sending their children to school. ...
Provision of elementary education is one of the major responsibilities of the
State. And with alignment to this responsibility and role, the State should
endeavour to provide education to all, irrespective of any discrimination. The
basic assumption behind this is that free education and incentives will attract
the audience and will help achieve the objectives of Universal Elementary
Education (UEE). Over the years, the access to schooling provisions has been
increased by increasing the resource base and number of government-run
schools. Several studies have shown that despite free provision of education,
the households increasingly prefer private unaided schools by utilising their
limited resources to fulfil ‘that’ need which the government is already legally
bound to provide. While exercising their choices explicitly, they are seeking
the options that relate to their own needs and interests. This paper is based
on a survey of randomly selected 7 villages of Faridabad district of Haryana
and tried to develop insights as to why parents choose a particular school and
determinants for making these choices to develop an understanding of the
process and whether they form an informed opinion or are merely perception
based, twenty-one schools were taken under the framework of investigation.
... According to the Ministry of Human Resource Development, the national dropout rate at the secondary level (17.9%) was significantly higher than at the primary level (4.3%) in 2014/15 (Jain 2017). Zafiu (2017) and Mukherjee (2010) stated that the reasons for the school dropout rates at an early age are • inadequate educational infrastructure; ...
... Comparison of entropy analysis between K-means and GA (K=5,9,12) ...
Clustering technique has been broadly used in numerous disciplines, such as science, statistic, software engineering and other social sciences in order to identify natural groups in large amounts of data. K-means is one of the most generally used partitioning clustering algorithms that tries to locate a user specific number of clusters (k), which are represented by their centroids, by minimizing the square error function. There are two straightforward approaches to cluster center initialization i.e. either to choose the initial values arbitrarily or else to choose the first k samples of the data points. Both approaches cause the algorithm to converge to sub optimal solutions. In contrast Genetic algorithm is one of the most frequently used transformative calculations which perform worldwide research to discover the result to a clustering issue. The algorithm normally begins with an arrangement of haphazardly developed individuals called the populace and design consecutive, new eras of the populace by genetic operations for example population selection, fitness function, crossover and mutation. This paper compares K-means and genetic algorithm based data clustering. A new algorithm is proposed known as genetic algorithm K-means (GAKM).Comparison was done of the basis of external, internal and time complexity.
In the contemporary world, no dimension of the world lives long without the aid of Goal-4 of SDGs focuses on inclusive, quality, and equity-based educational opportunities for everyone. The biggest barrier to achieving this goal is Out-of-school children. This paper analyses the causal factors of this issue from a child functioning perspective. This analysis uses microdata of Sindh MICS 2018-19 and the child disability is computed from the Child Functioning Module of the 5-17 Years-Questionnaire. Results of the study reveal that child disability is a significant determinant of out-of-school children. Female children are mostly likely to be out of the school as compared the male children; poverty also plays a pivotal role in keeping children away from school. Children whose mothers are more educated and are living in the richer quintiles have a low risk of being out of school. Difficulties in child functioning domains such as seeing, self-care, communication, and making friends are found significant determinants of out-of-school children.
Education is the most potent tool on which we would be successful to build an equitable and just society with the feature of dynamic social-economic mobility as education provides skill and competencies for economic well-being for whole society and so for the whole nation too. Education acts as on integrative force in society, imparting values that foster social cohesion and national identity. Moreover, Education plays a positive and interventionist role in correcting social and regional imbalances, empowering women and in securing rightful place for the scheduled tribes, caste, disadvantaged and minorities. Education makes Values, Loyalty, Sincerity and Education is Lighting Development in the Life.
Education is a basic human right, and it is central to unlocking human capabilities. It also has tremendous instrumental value. Education raises human capital, productivity, incomes, employability, and economic growth. But its benefits go far beyond these monetary gains: education also makes people healthier and gives them more control over their lives. And it generates trust, boosts social capital, and creates institutions that promote inclusion and shared prosperity.
The volume will provide immense inputs and help to academicians, students, researchers, policy makers, education planners and administrators.
For centuries girls were not treated equal to boys in many ways. The education of girls has become one of the most important concerns of 21st century not only at local level but also at the national level. Efforts by the government are on to ensure gender equality but government initiatives alone would not be sufficient to achieve this goal. Society must take initiative to create a climate in which there is no gender discrimination and girls have full opportunity to receive good quality elementary education without any barrier. The female literacy rate is also lower than the male literacy rate. The ground reality is deprivation and exploitation of girls especially from rural areas and those belonging to deprived sections of the society. Education is a powerful tool of social transformation. Hence, education for girls has to be paid special attention. Greater access for education must be ensured in the educational system. Gender sensitivity must be developed. A watch has to be kept on dropout rate of girls and corrective measures should be taken to check the dropout rates. There is no denying the fact that education of girls have made considerable progress in almost every aspect, but they still have to struggle against many handicaps and social evils in the male dominated society. The study found that there are 222 children in the age group of 06-14 years who are out of school from a single education zone. Taking this thing into consideration it seems a dream to achieve 100% literacy rate at elementary level if time bound steps are not taken to solve this problem. Hence, the study will help all stakeholders to become aware of the present situation and issues prevailing in the education zone Khag and can play an active role in solving these problems effectively and fruitfully.
Secondary data on school participation and completion highlight that dropping out from school before completing eight years of schooling continues to challenge the achievement of universal elementary education in India. Against the backdrop of high dropout rates at the primary and upper primary level, this article discusses the findings of a field survey conducted in 2008–2009 in a peripheral urban settlement in West Bengal. The same households were surveyed after five years in 2013. The purpose was to contextualise barriers to elementary education among poor children living in a socio-economically backward and low-income settlement. It was found that despite physical access to government schools, the dropout rate escalated with children’s age due to livelihood pressure at home and the double burden of household chores and income-generating work. This along with inadequate support from school made it challenging for children to complete elementary education.
India has more than 25 million orphan and abandoned children (OAC) (United Nations Children’s Fund, 2012). The burden of care for these OAC is on caregivers that are often ill equipped to meet their needs due to inadequate assets. Previous studies suggest that in communities with limited resources, OAC residing with non-biological caregivers are more at risk than those fostered by a biological parent. This study explores the association of caregiver and child characteristics with OAC educational outcome in India. The analysis was conducted using hierarchical logistic regression. The findings have implications for practice and policy in the global child welfare field.
Selected Educational Statistics, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India (2001-02)
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