In a country where girls’ education already lags behind that of boys, this could have a catastrophic impact on schooling the girl child
It takes a village to raise a child,” goes a famous African proverb, emphasising on the role of the community to raise children in a safe and healthy environment. A contextual question in today’s times is whether it must also take a village to teach a child? Because globally and in India, education has been one of the biggest victims of COVID-19. During and post-pandemic, it will require a collaborative approach to rethink and reprioritise strategies to keep children in school, especially girls.
A recent UNESCO report highlighted that school closures due to the national lockdown have affected over 320 million children in India; of these, about 158 million are girls. One cannot argue against the principles of school closure because the idea is to keep students safe at home. The reality, however, is that for millions of students, especially girls, closure of institutions of learning could mean permanently dropping out of school and reversing the gains made in recent years.
As the Coronavirus pandemic translates into a migrant crisis and an economic slowdown, the damage to education will be severe. If people have to make choices between survival, hunger and education, it is nobody’s guess which option will prevail. In a country like India, where girls’ education already lags behind that of boys, this could have a catastrophic impact on the schooling of the girl child and initiatives such as Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao.
Recently, in the fifth tranche of the Rs 20 lakh crore COVID-19 packages, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced various steps to boost online education during the lockdown, including the launch of the Prime Minister e-Vidya programme under which, there will be 12 Direct To Home (DTH) channels introduced for classes one to 12.
However, most of this discussion on e-learning still remains an urban/semi-urban privilege. It ignores both — India’s huge digital divide as well as pre-pandemic education challenges of keeping children, especially girls in school. According to the IAMAI-Nielsen India Internet, 2019 report, India has 451 million active internet users. Internet penetration in urban areas is twice of that in rural India. Even with an increasing number of internet users, there is a huge gender divide — only less than half of the users are women. This disparity is worse in rural India.
In a situation where many households do not have internet or requisite gadgets and those where boys will be given preferential treatment for use of the single, available internet-enabled gadget in the household, girls will suffer the most. The digital divide, coupled with gender and class divide, makes access to education unequal in the current times.
Even before the pandemic, India was off-track to meet the Sustainable Development Goal four target, which focusses on free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education to all girls and boys. According to educational statistics (ESAG 2018) of the Ministry of Human Resources and Development (MHRD), the overall Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) for elementary education in India was 96.9, a marginal decline in enrolment in absolute terms for 2015-16, in which gender disparity was a continuing trend.
Now add a pandemic scenario to this pre-existing situation. There are no prizes for guessing what the outcomes are likely to be. If you look at global examples of health emergencies and their linkage to education, there are compelling reasons to believe that we have all must worry about India’s education statistics.
In 2014, during the Ebola epidemic, a similar countrywide lockdown in the African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone resulted in closure of more than 10,000 schools. According to various studies, this resulted in a large number of school dropouts, especially girls. Most girls dropped out of school due to increased domestic care and responsibilities, including supporting income generation. Boys were prioritised over girls to attend school. With limited economic avenues within families and an increasing financial burden due to job losses, pay cuts and so on, many families are likely to evaluate the opportunity cost of sending girls to school, thus preventing their re-enrolment. Similarly, many boys will drop out of schools to support their family through this financial crisis. Given the comparable socio-economic settings in India in today’s COVID-19 context, we could face identical consequences in the foreseeable future.
In addition to the impact on education, closure of schools could lead to multi-pronged social and health imperatives on vulnerable communities. These could be from limiting access to proper nutrition to children, which was easily available in schools as part of the Mid-Day Meal programme, to making children vulnerable to trafficking, child marriage and more susceptible to physical and sexual violence.
If we do not invest in proper recovery planning and strategies on education during these times, this pandemic is only going to undo all the successes achieved thus far in making education accessible and inclusive. We also need to consider financial aid through fee-waivers, more active private sector participation in scholarships, providing free resources for online and offline learning to lessen the economic burden of schooling on needy families. It is vital to have a gendered approach in post-pandemic restoration of education in India. We need to factor in gender budgeting to support girl education in these times and it is also crucial to monitor girls’ attendance/rejoining upon school reopening. A multi-pronged strategy is necessary to manage this crisis in order to build a resilient and inclusive education system in the long term.
(The writer is Vice-President, Public Policy, Chase India.
