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Hierarchies of Access – Gender and Equity in Primary Education
This edited collection is a
product of desk research and case studies on the District Primary
Education Programme of the Government of India. It was commissioned
by European Commission and the study carried out by Educational
Resource Unit, Delhi.
The question we tried to explore are: Who gets to go to school as
opposed to who remains out of school and why? Who goes to which
primary school (government, alternate or private school) and why?
Which children are able to complete one level and go on to the next?
What determines learning achievements and why do so many children
emerge barely literate even after five years of schooling?
Chapter 1: Introduction recaptures the context in which
primary education got a big push in the decade of the 1990s in
India, the findings of Census 2001 and the broader social context in
which primary education is framed. In this chapter, we have tried to
prepare the ground to explore the problem of gender and social
disparities, locating one of the primary goals of DPEP as one of
reducing gender and social gap in educational access. This chapter
also outlines the methodology of the study and the structure of the
document.
Chapter 2: What DPEP and other data sources reveal is a
comprehensive overview of what existing data sources on primary
education tell us about access. In particular this chapter focuses
on the limitations of existing data and indices to capture gender
and social dynamics in primary education. This chapter draws on
Census of India 1991 and 2001, National Sample Survey and Education
statistics as generated by the Department of Education, Government
of India in general and DPEP in particular. The chapter concludes
that data reveal substantial progress in literacy, school enrolment
and retention as also average years of schooling – notwithstanding
persisting gaps between states, by place of residence, gender and
social groupings. Evidently, the many programmes initiated by the
government, in particular DPEP, have made a difference – especially
with respect to spreading schooling among girls. However, we still
have a long way to go. Across states/districts, the literacy rates
of females and scheduled castes and tribes, though below national
averages, are highly correlated with overall literacy rates and
inter-group disparities tend to decline as the average literacy rate
increases. More literate states show a narrower gender and social
gap. Statistics on school enrolment particularly gross enrolment
need to be interpreted with caution. In particular, data collected
from schools and the education department have displayed a tendency
for over reporting. What we need instead are net enrolment,
retention, transition and average years of schooling data –
disaggregated by gender, social groupings (within them by gender)
and type of school to get a better handle on the policies that are
working and how effectively they are working. It is disturbing that
despite improvement in enrolment rates, dropouts continue to remain
high and the hardest to reach in both rural and urban areas, more
specifically girls, scheduled castes and tribes still do not manage
to access any form of schooling. Finally, since the DPEP
specifically targets girls and children from socially deprived
backgrounds, it needs to refine its method of calculating both the
gender and social equity gaps as a way of assessing its efficacy.
Chapter 3: Hierarchies of Access argues that while we have
made significant progress with respect to access - realities on the
ground hint at layers and hierarchies. There is a mixture of hope
and despair on the ground. The demand for children’s education has
grown by leaps and bounds – from the poorest of the poor to the
better off, everyone wanted to send their children to school, they
all acknowledged the value of education in the overall development
of their children – girls and boys. Their despair is visible in
their choice of schools. In the process of coming to terms with
inadequacy of the government primary schools, several states have
opted for alternative and Education Guarantee Scheme schools, while
others willy-nilly encouraged the rapid growth of private schools.
Rural children today have to choose between different kinds of
schools of varying quality and endowments – private, government
primary schools, alternative schools EGS Schools etc. Physical
access to a functioning school, at least on the surface, emerged as
a non-issue in all the states except Chattisgarh – where
dysfunctional government schools continue to pose a major barrier.
This chapter explore the implications of this kind of hierarchy – on
quality, on teaching practices, on society’s stake in improving the
quality of schools and the social implications of the persistence of
inequality in access and quality. This chapter is the heart of the
report – substantiating the argument with data and evidence from
micro-studies.
Chapter 4: Institutional Mechanisms and Strategies is a nuts
and bolts chapter that lists and analyses concrete inputs made to
address gender and equity issues – for example targeted planning and
management, monitoring systems, school infrastructure, mechanisms to
forge closer school-community linkages (through village education
committees, mother-teacher associations etc) and early childhood
care and pre-school facilities. This chapter then goes on to explore
the effectiveness of these inputs in improving access and retention
of the hardest to reach. The chapter also explores – to a limited
extent – efforts to mainstream gender and social equality issues in
pedagogy / curriculum and teacher sensitisation and training related
issues. We have also tried to look at progress with respect to
integrated education of disabled children. This chapter essentially
looks at DPEP and not the larger primary education scenario.
Essentially this chapter looks at operational issues and problems in
gearing the primary education system to the needs and concerns of
the poor – among them girls and children from disadvantaged
communities.
Chapter 5: Alternative Schools and Education Guarantee Scheme
looks at the emergence of alternative education from a historical
perspective and argues that – at least in Madhya Pradesh,
Chhattisgarh and to a certain extent Andhra Pradesh – opting for
relatively low cost alternatives to formal government schools has
emerged as the most important equity strategy. This chapter also
analyses whether these alternative systems are providing good
quality education and whether they compare with the formal system.
This is an informative chapter – and tries to bring together
available information on the number and spread of alternative
schools in DPEP.
Chapter 6: Inside the classroom is a text analysis of 14
classroom processes studies done under the aegis of DPEP. It does
not purport to speak of the entire sector. The objective is to look
what is happening inside the classroom and see how gender and social
equity issues lay out within the school. Teacher attitudes, sitting
arrangements and other subtle, yet discernable practices are
explored. It makes interesting reading and provides a good
counterpoint to other chapters.
Chapter 7: An Overview of Micro Studies: Exploring the world
behind the purdah of statistics, this chapter captures the findings
of six qualitative village studies done in six states – MP,
Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
After explaining the methodology this chapter summarises the main
findings – arguing the persistence of subtle hierarchies of access
to schooling, community-school relationships and atmosphere inside
the classroom. The overwhelming message is that a new segregation is
being reinforced and strengthens through the school system.
Chapters 8 to 13: The six micro studies captures the nuance
of what primary education is like on the ground. It documents how
children from different social backgrounds are attending different
kinds of schools. In AP, there is a divide between the government
primary school (GPS) located in the dalit basti and the GPS in the
forward caste hamlet - only SC students attend the former school,
while the latter has very few SC students. The youth in the SC
colony in the AP village categorically stated that even if children
from the SC colony try to seek admission in the other GPS, they are
discouraged and told to attend the school in their own colony. A
similar divide was observed in Tamil Nadu between the GPS and the
school run by the Adi Dravida Welfare Board. There were glaring
disparities between the infrastructures of the two schools. School
buses ply to ferry BC and FC children to neighbouring private
schools. The situation is Haryana was perhaps the starkest. While
the village had a near equal ratio of SC to OBC and forward caste
population, more than 90 per cent children in the government school
are from SC community and more than 90 per cent private school-going
children from OBC and forward castes. Despite this high number, the
proportion of forward caste girls is extremely low in all the
schools partly because of a low sex ratio in the age-specific
population of the village. The situation in the Karnataka village
was marginally different as the government schools with much better
facilities and enviable pupil teacher ratios have not yet been
abandoned by children from relatively well-off communities.
Interestingly, however, the leadership of the village education
committee is actively promoting the fledgling private school!
Madhya Pradesh presents different dynamics - the Education Guarantee
Scheme schools cater to children from the tribal community and two
well-endowed government primary schools – one for boys and one for
girls – cater to the locally dominant Kurmi community (OBC). In the
absence of tangible evidence regarding the ‘performance’ of the
different schools, the people we spoke to said that the government
primary school with several rooms and many teachers was definitely
“better” than the two room and multi grade EGS school. Chhattisgarh,
which was till recently a part of Madhya Pradesh, has turned the
logic of EGS on its head – it caters to relatively forward
sub-groups of the tribal community and the OBC. The dysfunctional
GPS has been transformed into the preserve of the poor tribal
population.
The studies also capture the predicament of ‘invisible’ children –
Jeetagallu in Andhra Pradesh and Pali in Haryana – bonded to work
with an employer. The micro studies also look inside the classrooms.
While we did not find glaring caste or gender discrimination was not
evident, there was a clear bias in favour of the better-dressed and
better performers. While acknowledging that it is the very poor who
come to government schools teachers had little understanding or
appreciation of the family circumstances and the learning needs of
first generation learners who get little academic support from home.
They were also dismissive about the work burden of children –
especially girls. Prolonged periods of absence were explained as
either a lack of interest in education or labelling particular
children or groups of children as being low performers or bad
students. The teachers made no efforts to reach out to children from
disadvantaged groups; they focused only on the bright students. As a
result a large number of children were irregular, took little
interest in school and eventually dropped out – barely literate!
****
The overwhelming impression that
emerged from the desk research and six panchayats was that parents
recognise the value of primary education and notwithstanding their
economic situation, are eager to send their children to school. In
the more educationally backward areas of the country, availability
of a functional primary school of reasonable / comparable quality
remains a problem. If children do manage to go to a primary school,
a significant number drop out at the primary stage – with an
overwhelming number of girls dropping out at the penultimate stage
i.e., class IV or V as the case may be. Many of them barely learn to
read and write. For those who want to continue beyond the primary
stage, accessibility to and availability of post-primary education
remains a problem.
The rich have already walked away from government schools in urban
areas and all indications are that rural India is not far behind
(with notable exceptions like Himachal Pradesh). The District
Primary Education Programme launched by the government with
significant external aid has certainly made a beginning, the
question now is whether we – as a nation – have the courage to do
serious introspection.
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