International Girl Child Day: Enrolment of girl students in secondary classes poor

Bengaluru: While the country is set to celebrate International Girl Child Day on October 11, the enrolment levels of girls in secondary and higher secondary classes leave a lot to be desired. Though the RTE Act (2009) has helped significantly improve enrolment of girls at primary levels, the situation in higher classes continues to be dismal.

The RTE Act, which covers children between the ages of 6 and 14 years, enables free and compulsory education at the primary and upper primary levels. However, there are no such incentives for those above 14 years.

City experts feel that though the mindset of parents regarding the education of girls is changing, the government should allocate more resources to make secondary and higher education for girls more accessible and affordable.

While the net enrolment rate, a measure of the percentage of girls attending schools, is 89 per cent at primary level, it falls drastically to 32 per cent at higher secondary level. The average annual dropout rate for girls rises from 4.14 per cent at primary level to 17.8 per cent at secondary level.

Access to secondary education continues to be a challenge, considering that only 15.4% of schools in the country offer secondary education and only about 7 per cent of schools offer higher secondary education.

Komal Ganotra, Director, Policy, Research and Advocacy of Child Rights and You (CRY) said, “We need to drastically increase resources to meet these demands of making secondary and higher level education, affordable and easily accessible to the girl child.”