Special Report

Faltering high-potential initiative

In a society where one of two women is illiterate and where millions of girl children never enroll in school, the country’s 1,226 Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas offer SC, ST and minority girl children a chance to assert their right to education. Puja Awasthi reports from Lucknow

"After class IV, my father refused to send me to school. For three years I was sitting at home, tending cattle and collecting firewood. I didn’t want to marry early so when I learnt about this school I insisted on being sent and refused to eat or drink until my family relented." — Laxmi (14), Mathura

"My husband believed educating girls was a waste of time. But I was determined that my daughter Archana would go to school. The day he agreed to send her to school, I distributed sweets in the village." — Sulochana devi (45), Pratapgarh

"Married at 12 years of age, by 15 I had two children. I didn’t think my life would ever change but the school has offered me that opportunity. Now I know that with education everything is possible." — Raisa Bano (16), Jaunpur

Laxmi, Archana and Raisa don’t know each other and might never meet. Yet these three girl children have broken the shackles of tradition and are determined to improve their lot through education. In a country where female literacy is 53.67 percent (cf. male literacy of 75.26 percent) and where millions of girl children never attend school, they represent a new generation of girls born into traditionally marginalised groups insistent upon asserting their right to education.

Their intent is being facilitated by 1,226 Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV) schools which have mushroomed across the country during the past two years. KGBVs are high-potential upper primary schools with boarding facilities for adolescent girls from the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes (SCs and STs), other backward castes (OBCs) and minority communities (Muslims). Laxmi, Archana and Raisa are residential students of disparate KGBVs located in three backward districts of Uttar Pradesh — India’s most populous (180 million) and arguably most educationally backward state.

Promoted under the KGBV scheme launched in 2004 by the government of India as part of its flagship education for all project aka Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA), Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas are essentially residential upper primary schools for adolescent girls with minimal schooling. Established in educationally backward districts in the country, they fall within the jurisdiction of the department of elementary education and literacy (of the Union HRD ministry) and its various schemes viz. SSA, National Programme for Education of Girls at Elementary Level (NPEGEL) and Mahila Samakhya (MS).

Currently the 1,226 KGBVs operational in 24 states of the Indian Union provide residential schooling to 80,880 girl children aged between eight and 19 years. Moreover it’s a measure of the seriousness of intent — although belated — of the Central government in the matter of making up lost ground in the education of girl children that an additional 1,430 KGBVs have been sanctioned for the year 2007-08.

"The objective of KGBVs is to provide continuing education to girl children from disadvantaged groups of society who have been compelled to drop out of primary school. There is positive discrimination in favour of girl children from SC and ST communities because their school drop out percentages are very high. There’s an emerging consensus that most social ills such as 53 percent of children dropping out of primary school, high birth rates nationally and persistent child malnutrition can be traced to women’s illiteracy. The establishment of KGBVs across the country is an initiative to address this problem," says Deepak Trivedi, the Lucknow-based project director of Uttar Pradesh’s Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan programme.

Yet abysmal as is the gender disparity and education deprivation of women in 21st century India, some of whose benighted champions entertain super-power status ambitions, among women of the bottom strata i.e scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, it is worse. According to Census 2001 data, only 47.1 and 54.69 percent of STs and SCs respectively are literate with female literacy a rock bottom 34.76 and 41.90 percent. Moreover data from Elementary Education in India 2005-06, a National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA) publication, reveals that the share of SC and ST enrollment (as a percentage of total enrollment) drops sharply in secondary school. SCs and STs average a mere 14.5 and 12.5 percent of total enrollments in primary and upper primary schools countrywide. Moreover while in primary school girls constitute 47.31 and 46.61 percent of SCs and STs, this percentage drops to 43.92 and 42.02 in upper primaries. In overall enrollment from pre-primary to class XII, SC/ST girls form only 43.61 percent of SC/ST enrollments.

While social discrimination, gender prejudice and poverty play their part in keeping girls from the historically discriminated communities out of school, there are also problems of access into upper primary and secondary schools. According to NUEPA’s Elementary Education in India 2005-06, the number of upper primary schools countrywide is only 288,000 (of 1.12 million). Therefore the promotion of KGBVs, which offer schooling upto the upper primary (class VII) level, is seen as a welcome initiative to increase the access of SC, ST and Muslim girl children into upper primary and secondary education.

"Despite the fact that massive monetary and infrastructure resources have been invested in the six-year-old Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, there is huge gender disparity in school enrollments particularly of girls from STs and SCs. KGBVs offer a very good opportunity to address this problem by making it easier for girl children who are pulled out of school on the flimsiest excuses, to continue their education in safe and secure gender exclusive environments," says Manoj Kumar, principal secretary (education) of the Uttar Pradesh state government.

In the circumstances it is fortuitous that Uttar Pradesh, which scores low on every indicator of social and education development and particularly women’s education (female literacy in UP is 42 percent against the national average of 53.67 percent), boasts 323 KGBVs spread across 98 educationally backward blocks in the state. A model school in this state is the Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya in Kalakanar, Pratapgarh district (pop. 2.7 million) where 76 girls aged between 11 and 19 years live and study. Administered by staffers of Mahila Samakhya (MS) — a Central government institution promoted in 1988 to empower and educate rural women which has struck roots in 16 of UP’s 70 districts — KGBV, Kalakanar operates out of eight rooms on the first floor of a residential building.

The prime objective of this school as well as other KGBVs is to prepare girl children for secondary school admission. Established just a year ago, KGBV, Kalakanar has infused new hope within its 76 girl students, most of whom dropped out of school after class V. School warden Madhulika Rai, a postgraduate with a bachelor’s degree in education from Gorakhpur University, says attracting girl children into school was not easy as most were earning members of their families. But thanks to the goodwill Mahila Samakhya workers had generated through 18 years of social work in UP villages, parents were willing to trust them with their girl children.

"A year ago these girls were weak, malnourished and lacked self-confidence. Since then there’s been a sea change in their health, mindsets and morale. Today they confidently discuss gender equality and discrimination and are ready to challenge village panchayat elders on issues such as child marriages and the caste system. Even their aspirations have changed from wanting to be teachers to becoming police officers and district magistrates. We are not only giving the girls an education, we’re preparing them for life," says Rai.

Refreshingly, KGBV, Kalakanar offers a broad-based curriculum with considerable lifestyle content. While obliged to follow the upper primary school (upto class VII) syllabus of the state board, the school’s eight teachers have supplemented the academic curriculum with co-curricular and extra-curricular education inclusive of child friendly pedagogies and training in life skills, health and hygiene and gender issues.

Comments Subir Shukla, a Delhi-based education consultant and advisor to Mahila Samakhya, UP: "The curriculum delivery is very different from traditional government schools. We have customised teaching-learning processes commensurate with socio-economic backgrounds, aspirations, culture and experience of students. Most of them have had minimal schooling, so classroom teaching has to be experiential and hands-on with special emphasis on health issues and life skills training."

Within the ambit of these broader objectives, KGBVs deliver the curriculum atypically. For instance classroom periods are two hours instead of the usual 30 minutes to enable students to fully grasp classroom content, while kitchen economics flows into maths lessons and classroom duties are expanded to civics education. Unusually, girl students in KGBV, Kalakanar are also taught to lodge a first information report (FIR) in police stations and how to use the Right to Information Act. "Education beyond academic curriculums is important for girls to become self confident, develop critical thinking skills and realise they have to make choices and decisions," explains Shukla.

Outside the Hindi heartland, in other parts of the country as well, KGBV school managements are going beyond state board prescribed curriculums and teaching practices to ensure girl students are ready not just for secondary schooling but are also prepared to cope with real life situations. Moreover given that KGBVs enroll girl children from the base of the socio-economic pyramid, painstaking attention is paid to health and hygiene education. For instance in the KGBV at Karanrai Taluka in Karanjali village near Nashik (Maharashtra), run by the NGO Karanjali Adivasi Sewa Samiti (KASS) for the state government, girl students are instructed in personal grooming, health and nutrition.

"Given the deep poverty backgrounds of our students we have to start right from the basics in personal hygiene and grooming, including teaching them how to cut their nails and hair. Though we follow the curriculum and texts of the Maharashtra state board and have to ensure they make a smooth transition into a formal government school after class VII, our teachers make strenuous efforts to equip our girls with social and life skills," says R.J. Takalkar, an education alumnus of Pune University, who is the principal of KGBV, Karanjali village. Incidentally of the 36 KGBVs sanctioned in Maharashtra, only 16 have become operational.

However given that administrative control of the 1,226 KGBVs countrywide is vested in India’s 24 state governments and Union territories with broad powers of promotion and management conferred on them, their quality is variable. While the KGBV schools in Kalakanar and Karanjali are benchmark institutions and an advertisement for this novel and socially purposive concept, their counterpart in Chennapatna, a town 80 km from Bangalore, is actually a run-down hostel rather than a school. From this makeshift hostel 30 girl children walk every morning to the K-X Government Model High School, Byrapatna, a kilometre away.

EducationWorld special corresp-ondent Srinidhi Raghavendra who visited KGBV, Chennapatna came away unimpressed. "This school is actually a cramped 1,000 sq.ft three bedroom house with just one bathroom shared by 30 children, as a result of which most girl students aged 13-16 have to bathe in the open. One bedroom is used as the administrative office, and all 30 children are crammed into the other two bedrooms. There is no furniture, playing field, teaching materials, classrooms or anything to suggest this is a school," reports Raghavendra.

Yet given the propensity of government officials (teachers included) to assess infrastructure and institutions relatively rather than normatively, Renuka Devi, principal of KGBV Chennapatna, opines that the living standards of her girl students mark a great leap forward for them. "This KGBV provides good housing, clothes, toiletries, uniforms, books, stationery etc and security — all of which they don’t get at home. In my opinion half the children come here to escape circumstances of extreme deprivation, and not because they are genuinely interested in learning. Everything including accommodation is provided free of charge and they can live comfortably here. If they wish to study they can attend the government school nearby until they reach class IX. It’s a great boon for them," she says.

However the wide qualitative and functional disparity between KGBVs inter se represents all that is wrong with this Central government sponsored scheme. First, though KGBVs are funded by the Central government, promotion and the schools’ day-to-day management is vested with state governments, which in some cases (as in KGBV Chennapatna) may opt to establish and manage it or farm it out to Mahila Samakhya (as in Uttar Pradesh) or other NGOs (e.g Karanjali Adivasi Sewa Samiti runs the KGBV in Nashik, Maharashtra).

Second, unlike other Central government funded schools — Kendriya Vidyalayas and Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas — which are affiliated with the pan-India Central Board of Secondary Examination, KGBVs follow state board curriculums. Moreover, unlike the KVs and JNVs which are governed by the Kendriya Vidyalaya Samiti and Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti (both under direct jurisdiction of the Union ministry of HRD) respectively, KGBVs are governed by powerless Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan societies in the states. The outcome of this diffusion of funding, administration and academic responsibility between the Central government, state government, NGOs and SSA societies is lack of standardisation and variable objectives and quality of the 1,226 KGBVs established countrywide.

The diffusion of focus and administrative responsibility in the self evidently socially beneficial KGBV scheme is particularly surprising given that the Union HRD ministry already administers the smooth-running Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti which has promoted 551 CBSE-affiliated Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs) across the country. The fully residential JNVs provide high quality urban-benchmarked secondary education (class VI-XII) to 158,000 hand-picked rural merit students including 54,668 girl children with 40 percent reservation for SC and ST children. "Essentially JNVs are benchmark institutions for government, especially rural schools," O.N. Singh the Delhi-based commissioner of the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti told EducationWorld three years ago when this publication featured a cover story on JNVs (EW August 2004).

The budget for establishing a KGBV with 100 students is a mere Rs.45.50 lakh (Rs.26.25 lakh non recurring, and Rs.19.25 lakh as annual recurring expenditure for each school), of which Rs.20 lakh is towards construction of the school building (cf. Rs.3.5 crore for a JNV). The annual provision of Rs.19.25 lakh per year (Rs.19,250 per capita) to meet the residential and study expenses of 100 students (encompassing housing, all meals, medical care, uniform, books and other stationery, toiletries, civil clothes), and a school with teaching materials and other facilities is grossly inadequate.

To compound the problem, indifferent state governments don’t fully utilise the already meagre KGBV funds allocated to them by the Centre. For instance in Bihar (110 KGBVs) which has the ignominious reputation of boasting the highest number of out-of-school children in India (3.17 million), the state education department utilised only 28 percent of the Central funds allocated for the KBGV scheme in 2006-07.

Anu Monga, president of the Association of Intenational Schools of India (TAISI) and principal of the Bangalore International School dismisses the Rs.1,604 per month allocation for each KGBV student to cover residential, board and tuition fees as wholly inadequate. "To build a child-friendly residential school, introduce modern technology-oriented pedagogies, hire motivated teachers, counsellors etc, the provision of Rs.1.6 lakh per month per school of 100 students is absurdly low. A realistic budget would be around Rs.6 crore for the school building and infrastructure and a minimum of Rs.1 crore as recurring expenditure," says Monga.

Quite clearly the expenditure suggested by Monga for each KGBV is out of reach of the Central government, which allocates a mere Rs.300 crore annually for the KGBVs. Moreover Budget 2007-08 merges KGBV funds with SSA allocation, thereby making it difficult to track outlays for this specific scheme.

The most visible manifestations of the resource crunch to which KGBVs are subject ab initio are their school buildings (mostly rented or in the District Education and Training Institute (DIET) campuses). For instance KGBV, Kalakanar run by the Mahila Samakhya functions out of eight rooms on the first floor of a residential building. There is no space to play except for a nearby open field, which the girls use occasionally for games, and at which boisterous onlookers are a constant irritant. A funds crunch also means few resource books, the absence of a library, common room, and inadequate teaching learning materials among other deficiencies.

Comments Lalita Pradeep, principal of Lucknow’s DIET, who doubles as administrator and patron of the district’s sole KGBV in the rural block of Mal: "How do you explain that the budget allocation for KGBV has no provision for a boundary wall? Or that classrooms are expected to double as dormitories?"

But Pradeep has other objections to the "hurriedly introduced" KGBV scheme. "There is no follow-up mechanism to ensure these girls transit smoothly into secondary school. The KGBVs just abandon their students after they pass class VII. Moreover clubbing it with the mammoth Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan means there is no special focus on the KGBV schema," she says.

Lack of planning and provision for KGBV alumnae also bothers Uttar Pradesh’s basic education department. Principal secretary (education) Manoj Kumar (quoted earlier) admits the most serious policy flaw is that there is no provision to upgrade KGBVs to secondary schools (class VIII-X) status. "Within a year, the changes in our girl students are amazing. They gain enthusiasm and immense self-belief. It is important to capitalise on their enthusiasm and learning. A solution is to upgrade KGBVs into high schools, so that girl students have the option to continue their studies," he says.

Recently Dharam Singh Saini, the state’s minister for basic education, while inaugurating 12 additional KGBVs run by Mahila Samakhya, UP said the newly installed BSP government (headed by woman chief minister Mayawati) is committed to upgrading KGBVs up to class XII. "Ours is a woman ruled party and who better than us to work in the cause of female education," he said. However the numbers don’t match his rhetoric. The state government Budget 2007-08 provides a mere Rs.1,480 crore for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (1.4 percent of the total budget outlay of Rs.100,911 crore) and makes no specific provision for girls’ education.

There is little doubt that KGBV, while salutary, is a scheme planned in a hurry by educrats in Shastri Bhavan who have paid scant attention to the fundamentals of quality school education — viz, school building and infrastructure, classrooms, teachers, curriculum, and teaching materials. After four weeks of pursuing Anita Chauhan, deputy secretary in the Union ministry of human resource development, for a comment on how the Central government plans to upgrade the country’s 1,226 KGBVs, your correspondent was sent a curt one line e-mail saying, "The information in respect of KGBV scheme... is available on our website."

Against the backdrop of the Union government having effectively dumped this hastily prepared initiative on state governments, Rashmi Sinha, project director of Mahila Samakhya in Uttar Pradesh, has forwarded a proposal to the UP state government to invest Rs.1,130 crore to upgrade the 323 KGBVs in the state to class XII level. The Planning Commission’s 2006 working group on provision of education for girls and other disadvantaged communities has also recommended that KGBVs be extended to class XII.

"We have to acknowledge that KGBV girl students are from very poor and socially disadvantaged backgrounds. If we abandon them after class VII, all that they have been taught comes to naught. They need an enabling environment to build on their primary education. Indeed even beyond providing them education, we need to think in terms of promoting polytechnics and special universities for SC and ST girls," says Sinha.

Given that the number of SC and ST and Muslim women and girls countrywide is estimated at 128 million and only 42 percent of them are literate, the promotion of KGBVs across the country is a well-conceived, high-potential initiative. However quite clearly, there are implementation snags and lags which are hobbling this three-year-old initiative.

Therefore there’s an urgent need to remodel and upgrade the academic and living standards of KGBVs to the level of JNVs. Moreover corporate sponsorship of KGBVs (recommended by the Union HRD ministry) needs to be actively pursued. There is no dearth of evidence to suggest that girls’ education is the prerequisite of breaking the cycle of poverty and deprivation, ensuring better health and nutrition of children, halting the spread of killer diseases, and creating an equitable social order. A mid-term appraisal of the KGBV scheme is crucial to ensure that Laxmi, Archana and Raisa’s hopes and that of millions of other girl children for a better life through education, are realised in the near future.

With Gaver Chatterjee (Mumbai) & Srinidhi Raghavendra (Bangalore)