Dropout rate among girl students decreased during Covid: Govt

Despite concerns that the dropout rate among girl students went up during Covid, the government has said that, on the contrary, fewer number of girls were leaving school. Dropout rates across primary, upper primary and secondary schools among girls fell in 2019-20 in comparison to the previous two years, the Ministry of Education said in Parliament on Monday.

Furnishing data from the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE), the education ministry said that across primary schools, the dropout rate rose from 3.3 per cent in 2017-18 to 4.3 per cent in 2018-19, but fell to 1.2 per cent in 2019-20.

Similarly, in the upper-primary segment, the dropout rate fell from 5.6 per cent in 2017-18 to 5.1 per cent in 2018-19 and fell to 3 per cent in 2019-20. In secondary school, where the dropout rates are considerably high, it fell from 18.4 per cent in 2017-18 to 17 per cent in 2018-19 and then to 15.1 per cent in 2019-20.

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“The above data shows that the drop-out rate of girls has been decreasing consistently,” minister of state in the education ministry, Annapurna Devi said in her reply.

In 2017-18, the dropout rate in Assam in primary education was highest at 8.9 per cent, while in 2018-19, Meghalaya accounted for the highest dropout rate among school girls at 15.3 per cent. In 2019-20, Manipur registered the maximum dropout rate with 8.7 per cent.

In upper-primary education, Bihar accounted for the highest in all the three years – 13.3 per cent in 2017-18, 12.9 per cent in 2018-19 and 9.2 per cent in 2019-20.

Assam again accounted for the highest dropout rate in 2017-18 as well as in 2019-20 in secondary education with 35.2 per cent and 32.9 per cent respectively, while Arunachal Pradesh had the highest dropout rate in 2018-19 (35 per cent).

“In order to ensure greater participation of girls in schools and to reduce drop-out rate of girls, various interventions have been targeted under Samagra Shiksha which include opening of schools, provision of free text-books & uniforms to girls up to Class VIII, provision of gender-segregated toilets in all schools, teachers’ sensitisation programmes to promote girls’ participation,” Devi said in her reply.

“Additionally, all States and UTs have been requested to proactively track girls as well as transgender children, who are not enrolled in schools or have dropped out of school and get them admitted in schools,” she added.

In the winter session of the Parliament, the Standing Committee on Empowerment of Women asked the Centre to step up efforts to prevent girls from poor families from dropping out of schools. Observing UDISE data, the panel noted that in 2018-19, the Gross Enrolment Ratio among girl students fell from 96.72 per cent in elementary schools to 76.93 per cent in secondary schools. In higher secondary education, it was 50.84 per cent. Across sectors, the panel noted, the dropout rate among girl students in 2019-20 was 15.1 per cent.

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