Girl enrollment rises at secondary school level, but drops at primary and upper primary level, reveals study

By: Yash Gupte

According to the Gender Parity Index (GPI) of Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER), the representation of girls in school education is in line with representation of girls in population of corresponding age group

The Ministry of Education has recently released a detailed report titled ‘Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) 2021-22’ on school education of India. The data is interesting. While enrollment in secondary sections has improved, it has deteriorated at the primary school level. This data throws up intriguing challenges for policy makers.  In 2021-22 over 12.29 crore girls were enrolled in primary to higher secondary showing an increase of 8.19 lakh compared to the enrolment of girls in 2020-21. According to the Gender Parity Index (GPI) of Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER), the representation of girls in school education is in line with representation of girls in population of corresponding age group. The Ministry of Education said that the GER in higher secondary has made significant improvement from 53.8 percent to 57.6 percent in 2021-22. 

The Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) is an application developed by the Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education in the year 2018-19. It was developed with the motive of collecting online data from schools to overcome the issues related to the erstwhile practice of manual data filling in paper format. The elements that UDISE+ gathers data on include school infrastructure, teachers, enrollments, exam results, etc. Information collected through UDISE+ is used for the planning, optimized resource allocation and implementation of various education-related programs.

The chart below shows the enrollment of girl students at different levels of school education from 2018-19 to 2021-22.

Source: UDISE+

The number of girl students enrolled at primary level of school education (Grade 1 to Grade 5) in 2019-20 was 5,84,34,954. The GPI for the GER at primary level of education was reported at 1.01 in 2018-19. GPI value 1 or more shows that the GPI is favorable to the girl students, while GPI of less than 1 shows relative under representation of girls in that specific level of school education. The number of girl students enrolled at primary level of education increased to 5,84,91,640 in 2020-21 from 5,84,34,954 in 2019-20. But the year 2021-22 witnessed a dip in the enrollment of girl students at primary level. The number dropped to 5,83,24,595 in 2021-22 from 5,84,91,640 in 2019-20. This shows that there was a drop of around 1, 67, 045 girl students studying at the primary level.

An increase was reported in the enrollment of girl students at the upper primary ( Grade 6 to Grade 8) level of education from 2019-20 to 2021-22. The number of girls enrolled at the upper primary level increased from 3,14,45,816 in 2019-20 to 3,22,78,942 in 2021-22.

However, the enrollment of girl students at higher secondary section saw a jump in the past three years. In 2019-20, a total number of 1.26 crore girls were admitted in schools which increased to 1.30 crore in 2020-21. In the next year, the number went up to 1.38 crore. This data is particularly important considered India had traditionally seen low number of female students in higher education.

In 2015, the Narendra Modi government initiated the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao campaign which aimed at increasing female sex ratio and female enrollment in schools, both of which was alarmingly low in the country, particularly in the northern states. If the above statistics are to be believed, the campaign has bore fruits, particularly at the higher education number. However, the number of girls enrolled in primary and upper primary has dropped which is a matter of concern. The number of girls enrolling in schools has increased in India, thanks to several schemes and better awareness, however, getting them to finish school continues to be a problem.