Asked If It Increased To 16.6 Percent At Secondary Level, Centre Says…..
Srinagar: The dropout rate of girl students at secondary education level in Jammu and Kashmir has risen to 6.3 percent during 2021-22, the centre informed Rajya Sabha.
Responding to a question by Akhilesh Prasad Singh whether it is a fact that the dropout rates of girl students in secondary and elementary education levels in J&K have risen to 16.6 percent and 3.7 percent in 2019-20, from 1.6 percent and 2.5 percent respectively in 2017-19, Minister of State in the Ministry of Education, Jayant Chaudhary said the Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL), Ministry of Education has developed the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) system to record data on indicators of school education provided by all the States and Union Territories.
As per UDISE+, he said, dropout rates of girl students in Elementary and Secondary education levels in J&K for the year 2018-19 to 2021-22 is: 6.9, 5.8,4.2 and 3.8 for elementary level for 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22 while for Secondary level, it is 17.7, 18.6, 4.6, and 6.3 respectively. The minister said that department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL), Ministry of Education is implementing the scheme of Samagra Shiksha for universalization of quality education throughout the country in coordination with the States and UTs including Jammu & Kashmir.
Bridging gender and social gaps at all levels of school education is one of the major objectives of the Samagra Shiksha, he said. “Under Samagra Shiksha, various facilities are being provided for promoting girls education. These include opening of schools in the neighbourhood as defined by the State, free uniform and text-books to girls up to Class VIII, provision of gender segregated toilets in all schools, provision of self-defence training to girls from classes VI to XII, stipend to CWSN girls from class I to Class XII, among others, special State specific projects for equity such as life skills, awareness programmes, incinerators, sanitary pad vending machines etc., and vocationalization of secondary education.”
In addition, to reduce the dropout of Girls at all levels of school education, under Samagra Shiksha, there is a provision of Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas (KGBVs) in the Educationally Backward Blocks where rural female literacy rate is below the national average, he said. “KGBVs are residential schools from class VI to XII for girls belonging to disadvantaged groups such as SC, ST, OBC, Minority and Below Poverty Line (BPL).”