EDUCATION-INDIA: Alternative Schools Net Girl Dropouts

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Rana Karmakar

HARDOI, Aug 28 1999 (IPS) - The villagers of Khosi Kheda think that the proper age for a girl to become a bride is 14. So nobody really expected Kishwar Jahan’s teachers to oppose her marriage.

Kishwar was married and packed off to her husband’s home in spite of all the arguments that Mehndi Hassan and other teachers at the local makhtab (primary school imparting Islamic education) made to her parents.

But the incident, a few months ago, did generate a debate on child marriage in Khosi Kheda and the nearby villages of Fakiran Kheda, Narayanpur, Tiloyiya Khurd and Fareda all of which fall in the Hardoi district of northern Uttar Pradesh state.

Consequently, the marriages of Nasreen Bano, Shama Parveen and Rukhsana – all Kishwar Jahan’s schoolmates at the makhtab – have been postponed.

A few hundred metres from the makhtab at Khosi Kheda is the balashala (children’s school) run by Deshwanti Devi where another 14-year-old, Aarti, is back to her books after being forced to drop out of regular school by her parents.

Makhtabs and Balashalas are examples of alternative schools recognised under the World Bank-funded, District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) which endeavours to get dropouts, particularly girls, back into classrooms.

Studies conducted by the Uttar Pradesh state’s ‘Education For All’ project show that thanks to alternative schooling the dropout rate rate among girls has fallen by 58 percent over the last six years.

The dropout rate among boys from government schools has not been investigated but is partly the result of a tendency for parents to shift them to privately run schools which offer better quality education.

Girls are discriminated against in India’s patriarchal society and parents generally expect daughters to turn into good homemakers even discouraging them from going to regular school which may be some distance away.

Overall, South Asia is a problem area for gender equity with the proportion of girls in primary school increasing by 0.2 percent in the first half of the 1990s – a rate of growth at which gender equity will happen in the next two centuries.

India presents huge disparities among states according to the Education Performance Index (EPI) devised for ‘Education Now’ a report brought out last year by Oxfam, the U.K-based non- governmental organisation (NGO).

While southern Kerala state ranks 12th in Oxfam’s EPI table alongside South Korea and above Mexico, Uttar Pradesh ranks 100th or fourth from bottom, below Mozambique.

Recognition by DPEP has improved enrollment in makhtabs, balashalas and other alternative schools. Over the past few years, enrollments have crossed the 10,000 mark in a state where the adult female literacy rate is an abysmal 24 percent.

The middle school enrollment ratio in Uttar Pradesh, which happens to be India’s most populous state with 165 million people, is also a low 49 percent.

“There was something wrong with the thinking of our people,” says Shamsher Ali, one of DPEP’s many motivators. “But things are changing slowly.”

The attitudinal change has many small but significant facets such as the use of Hindi and English numerals in the makhtabs which are usually fastidious about Arabic symbols.

But then there has been some give and take. The makhtabs were accommodated in the DPEP just so that Muslim girls could get formal education without ignoring community sensitivities.

The balashala model is flexible enough to club disadvantaged pre-schoolers along with older children upto the age of eleven.

“While those in the 3-6 age group benefit from a school- readiness package, older children get primary education,” explains Rama Devi, a balashala teacher.

“Multi-grade teaching takes care of space and manpower problems,” as well she added.

Balashalas take in girls who have dropped out of regular school for one reason or another. Like 9-year-old Goldie who stayed home for a whole year after being slapped by her teacher at a regular school at Sandila, a nearby town.

“We persuade parents to let their out-of-school girls

continue studies in a balashala which is like an extension of their homes,” says local primary education official, R. P Sharma.

The parents usually agree because the balashalas are flexible enough not to interfere with their domestic chores which may include looking after siblings, Sharma says.

Muslim girls who go to the makhtabs can usually carry on with the traditional kadhai and zardosi (needlework) work they are expected to help with in villages like Fareda.

Akbar Ali, 65, a resident of Fared says he is happy that his grand-daughter has time to get an education and also attend to the family’s needlework trade.

According to Project Director Vrinda Sarup, the DPEP models have helped break traditional and social barriers that have long hampered girls’ education in the remote villages.

“We plan to cover all the districts of Uttar Pradesh by the year 2005,” she said.