Children's Day: Urban India doesn’t always spend more on girls’ education

NEW DELHI: Data shows that rural India spends more on girls than boys for undergraduate and postgraduate courses. For Children’s Day, Careers360 looks at the enrolment of children and youth in education and what it costs.

Enrolment in school

The figures for five years from 2010 to 2015 show that in Primary Classes (1 to 4) and Middle Classes, (6 to 8), the gap between girls and boys is more or less constant at around 11 to 7 percent. However, the gap is wider in the Secondary Classes (9-10), between 12 and 10 percent. But over the years, it has been shrinking.

Children dropping out

The drop-out rate at different stages of school education for 2013-’14 throws up a surprise. The drop-out rates for girl students is less than that of boys. However, the figures for Classes 1 to 10 taken together are alarming, with the figure for boys at 48.1 percent, ahead of that of girls by just 1.4 percentage points.

Cost of education

Who would have thought rural India spends substantially more on women’s education at graduate and postgraduate levels compared to urban India? From Classes 1 to 10, parents spent more on boys than girls. But from undergraduate to postgraduate courses, it’s the other way round.

Text by Rajaram Sukumar and graphics by Shvetank Verma

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