Where are we today with respect to girls' education

and a disjunction between education, learning, personality development (including selfesteem and self confidence) and livelihood skill – has led to cynicism about the value ofprimary education itself. This is far more critical for girls than it is for boys; in the samevein these strategies are of greater relevance to the most deprived than for those who arerelatively better off. Whichever way we look, we cannot separate issues of social equityfrom gender equality.Conclusion:This brief recap of major trends, processes and programmes in the field of elementaryeducation during the decade of the nineties presents a mixed picture, major improvementsin the creation of infrastructure leading to higher enrolment rates alongside resistantpockets of non-access, dropouts and poor learning. Not unexpectedly, the broad pictureneeds to be differentiated by region, caste, class and gender with those occupying thelower niches of the system faring the worst.What, however, is clear is the growth in social demand for education and skills includingin strata earlier considered as uninterested in education. Schooling has emerged as asocial norm in most parts of this diverse country. The tragedy is not that there is nodemand or there is not desire for education. The tragedy is that good quality educationthat is relevant to all – especially the poor in rural and urban areas – remains elusive.Persistent problems and bottlenecks are better explained by the rigidities of variousschemes / programmes on offer and the relative inability of both planners andpractitioners to customize the services to better serve a more differentiated market.Crucial in this regard is the need to strengthen both the backward (in the form of crèches,balwadis, early childhood nutrition) and forward (upper primary / middle schools, skillproviding institutions linked to the employment market) linkages if the relevance of andinterest in even basic education is to be retained. Equally important is to tackle the qualityparameters of education so as to ensure that children in school actually learn.It is insufficiently appreciated that even at the elementary levels there are today abewildering variety of schools – government primary schools (regular), private (aidedand unaided), non-formal and alternative (government and non-government) – eachoffering differential services and catering to different strata of the population. What isdisturbing is that children from different strata are increasingly being bunched in differenttypes of schools, partly as a result of market forces and partly as a result of policy. Whilebetter off children – male, upper caste, urban, better-off – are increasingly accessingprivate schools seen as better endowed and functioning, poorer children, especially girls,more so in backward regions are being relegated to government and alternative schools.Unfortunately, the financial crunch hits these schools catering to the worst off and mostin need. Hierarchies in educational provision and access are thus mirroring socialhierarchies. Such a situation if allowed to continue unchecked may well wash away thegains of the previous decade – especially with respect to girls’ education.India has still to meet the EFA goal of six per cent of GDP being earmarked foreducation, this despite substantial increase in both domestic allocation and foreign aid inIndia Case Study Page 32 20 June 2003