Merger of schools behind girl students' dropout rate

VIJAYAWADA: The merging of 4,000 government schools as part of rationalisation has contributed to increasing the rate of girls dropping out.

The girls are affected by the distance to their new schools, lack of sufficient classrooms, toilets, difficulties faced during their periods, apart from availability of hostels and drinking water.

After merger, some schools now have one or two washrooms for 400 girl students, leaving them with little time to attend to their needs. Due to this, several girls have reported health problems.

Based on government statistics, there are 68,42,569 students studying in 61,474 government schools. The classroom availability is about 53.5 per cent. There are only 24.4 per cent of toilets available for girl students and it falls to 21.2 per cent for boys. Only 20 per cent of students have drinking water facilities.

“Separate washrooms were announced by the government for girls in schools but these have not been provided,”  said D. Ramadevi, state general secretary, All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA)

These dropouts have led to marriage of minor girls. Hundreds of marriages of minor girls have been stopped by non-government organisations and government agencies.

“The government had rationalised the schools without thinking of transport facilities to the interior villages. Lack of transport has affected the confidence of parents in sending their daughters to schools,” Ms Ramadevi alleged.

The government is provide several schemes to get more girls to join schools, but has not succeeded. To overcome the problem of transport, the government had distributed 1,99,712 bicycles to Class IX girl students in 2017. Student union leaders wanted the facility to be extended to those in Class VII, to decrease the dropout rate.