New Delhi, 30 December, 2021: Recently, educators and activists have demanded that the central government must invest more in girl child education and scholarship disbursement from the year 2022. This demand has arrived due to the prevalence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent decision to increase the age of marriage for girls.
Note: The 2021 Union Budget witnessed a steep fall in the amount of education-related investment. The total number of educational expenses for school education got reduced by around INR 5000 crore.
Lack of Girl Education Scholarships: Details
- In 2021, the National Incentive Scheme for Girls for Secondary Education (a scholarship scheme for girls from Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes) was granted only INR 1 crore. In 2017-18, the government spent over INR 292 crore on the scheme. The allocation was reduced to approximately INR 165 crore in 2018-19 and to just under INR 9 crore in 2019-20.
- More popular scholarships such as AICTE post-matric scholarships have also been underfunded over the years.
- Officials and educators also noted that grant amounts were too low to provide any incentive for girls and that the government should allocate much larger amounts of money to ensure these programs were successful in keeping girls in school.
Lack of Girl Education Scholarships: Challenging Issues
- Reduced funds imply that fewer students choose these programs.
- Even for post-secondary scholarships, fewer girl students apply due to the difficulty of the application process. Over the years, the allocation of funds for post-matric scholarships has also decreased.
- When it comes to Aadhar verification, all students (including girls) are required to fill out ‘Know Your Customer’, linking bank accounts to Aadhar. Sometimes, scholarships are denied because their name is wrong or they have not linked their bank accounts to Aadhar. Not linking Aadhar and bank accounts is a classic problem for any Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scholarship.
- Due to irregular official procedures, students (including girls) do not receive without any scholarships.
Impact of COVID-19 on Overall School Education in India
In March 2020, when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation, a nationwide lockdown was imposed in India to contain the spread of the virus. This situation led to a change in the teaching mode from offline mode to online mode. In 2020-21, INR 818 crore was invested by the central government across states to promote online learning and INR 268 crore was invested for online teacher training under the Samagra Shiksha* programme to ensure professional development of teachers.
*Samagra Shiksha is an overarching programme for the school education sector extending from preschool to Class 12. It aims towards the improvement of school effectiveness measured in terms of equal opportunities for schooling and equitable learning outcomes.
Efforts Made for Improving School Education in India
To improve the quality of education available to girl students and control the unfavorable impact of COVID-19 pandemic on school education, the central government introduced several initiatives. Some of these initiatives are as follows:
- PM eVidya: The initiative was launched in May 2020 under the Aatma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan. Under this initiative, all states are provided access to various e-content through the web portal – DIKSHA. The e-content includes courses for teachers as well as quizzes. The initiative also included a channel for differently abled children.
- Swayam MOOCs: A total of 92 massive open online courses (MOOCs) are provided to open school students from Class 9 to Class 12.
- National Repository of Open Educational Resources (NROER): NROER is created with around 17,500 e-contents for various school subjects in all classes.
- Manodarpan: This initiative is a part of the Atma Nirbhar Abhiyaan. It aims at providing psychological support to students, parents, and teachers.
Failure of Gender Inclusion Fund Implementation
Despite the above-mentioned efforts, the education of girls has been witnessing a crisis in terms of optimum attainment of education. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 talked aboutestablishing a Gender Inclusion Fund (GIF) to build the nation’s capacity to provide equitable quality education for all girls as well as transgender students. However, there is no information on whether such a separate fund will be created and for what it will be used.