Context:

• We must bring more and more women within the ambit of higher education.

Need for education for Women:

• As a society, women can be the pivot to bring about critical and lasting social transformation.
• As individuals, they deserve a shot at being the very best they can.
• Their economic participation is necessary to make India an economic powerhouse.
• The global average for the private rate of return (the increase in an individual’s earnings) with just one extra year of schooling is about 9 per
• the social returns of an extra year of school are even higher — above 10 per cent at the secondary and higher education levels as per a decennial World Bank
• Interestingly, the private returns for women in higher education are much higher than for men — 11 to 17 per cent as per different

Issues with Women Education:

As girls progress from primary to secondary to tertiary school levels, their numbers decrease by the year. 

Challenges of Economic Conditions:

 The primary ones for the dropouts are obvious: Girls drop out of school because:

• they are engaged in domestic activities (31.9 per cent)
• they have financial constraints (18.4 per cent),
• they are not interested in education (15.3 per cent)
• they get married (12.4 per cent). 
• over one crore girls are on the verge of dropping out of schools due to the pandemic alone.

Challenges of Social Norms:

• the states having the highest rate of secondary school drop-outs among girls are also the ones where a significant percentage of girls get married before the age of 18 years.
• at the higher secondary level, 28 per cent of boys attend private schools as opposed to 24 per cent of girls.
• The average annual household expenditure on girls at this level is Rs 2,860 less than that on boys.
• Of the girls who do manage to enrol in a tertiary degree, a smaller proportion go on to pursue professional courses such as engineering (28.5 per cent), while many more take courses such as pharmacy (58.7 per cent) or opt for “normal graduation” (52 per cent) as per AISHE 2019-20. 
• Their representation is lowest in institutions of national importance, followed by deemed and private universities.

Means to enhance women participation in Education:

Setting up Community schools:

• As an immediate step, in every locality, a mohalla school or a community learning programme should be started with appropriate Covid norms if the local disaster management authorities and the state governments permit. 
• Evidence from the Ebola pandemic shows that continued engagement with educational activities reduces drop-outs in a statistically significant way. 
• NITI Aayog, with the help of civil society organisations, had started a community programme led by volunteers called “Saksham Bitiya” in 28 aspirational districts where more than 1.87 lakh girl students were trained in socio-emotional and ethical learning.
• Developing a Gender Atlas: to predict likely drop-outs, a gender atlas comprising indicators that are mapped to key reasons for school drop-outs should be developed. 
• Training of Teachers: Teachers should also be trained in all the scholarships and schemes available that provide economic support to girls and their families for continuing their education.
• Conditional Cash Transfers: there is a need to revise the National Scheme of Incentive to Girls for Secondary Education in areas or states with high prevalence of drop-outs and early child marriages. The scholarship amount may be increased and tied to the completion of graduation, with yearly scholarships paid to students upon successful completion of each year of their undergraduate degree.
• Targetting the backward district: special education zones need to be set up in areas which have been traditionally backward in education. Every panchayat showing a consistent trend in girl child drop-outs should have composite schools till higher secondary (classes I-XII).
• Setting up of Gender Inclusion Fund: The National Education Policy 2020 provides for a gender inclusion fund. This fund should be utilised to support STEM education in these schools as well as in all Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas.
• Seeking private participation: The recently modified viability gap funding scheme includes provisions for social infrastructure projects, including education. For greenfield projects in higher education, 60 per cent of the funding can be accessed as viability gap funding from the central and state governments. For pilot projects in education, close to 80 per cent of the funding is available as viability gap funding and an additional 50 per cent as operational cost in initial years.
• Developing appropriate behaviour: Behavioural Insights Units (BIU) may be established across states to tackle social issues with the help of ultra-local NGOs/CSOs to reach the last mile. NITI Aayog has taken a leap forward in this direction by establishing a BIU to tackle nutrition and health challenges in aspirational districts.

Conclusion:

• with recent experiments and learning experience, informed targeting of ample resources and an agile policy environment, this challenge could well prove to be an opportunity. Given the right enabling environment, educational outcomes can be improved.

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