Peripherals Creeping To Mainstream: Success Story Of Vadodara Girls School – OpEd

The India’s rapidly deteriorating sex ratio, large gender gap and high drop out rate of girls has prompted the central government to initiate social campaigns such as ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ (Save girl child, educate girl child).

More such steps are needed as in 2015 only 3.7 million eligible girls were out of school, whereas in rural areas girls receive an average of fewer than four years of education.

Almost every conceivable strategy and approach to promote the education of girls has been covered in the National Policies on Education and five year plans of the Government of India; however still many targets need to be achieved especially in the area of women education. The NPE 1986, POA 1992, SSA 2001, NCF 2005 and the NCF for Teacher Education in 2010 all focused on the education of girls and we cannot say things are not improving; just the pace needs to be enhanced.

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (known as RTE) Act, 2010, charted a new roadmap for gender equality in education in India and the five year plans (Sixth Plan 1980-85, Seventh Plan 1985-90 and Ninth 1997-2002) specifically paid attention to educationally backward states and socially deprived groups and highlighted the role of local communities. All policy documents recognize that girl/women education, especially from poor communities and rural areas, need special attention. While affirmative action in the form of scholarships, abolition of tuition fees, bonds, reservation of jobs and places in institutions of higher learning have been provided, still there are evidences of stumbling blocks at the elementary level itself.

Still better implementation mechanism for education programs and policies is missing. Policies that are critical to increasing girls’ access, including flexible school times and adapted curricula, remain at the micro level and are not being integrated.

Not only this, India’s budget for education sector remains far from the desired 6 percent of the GDP. We are still not able to place education on the priority lists in budget allocation, which hampers the image of education. If we look at the 2016 budget, there is an increase of Rs 43,554 crore for school education (approx 3 per cent increase) and Rs 28,840 crore for higher education (approx 7.3 per cent increase).

These issues have created a large gap in enrollment and gender parity, girls with disability, poor households, from remote or rural areas and girls from minority ethnic or linguistic backgrounds have more difficulty in getting into primary or completing secondary education. Therefore, there is a need to create strategies that would increase girls’ participation in education, strategies that would promote safe and sustainable education for the girls.

In this context, making a provision for only girls school with more women teachers, gender sensitive teacher training, learning material, scholarships, awareness-raising campaigns and community mobilization can make a positive impact on the society and girl education, it will make families more interested to send girls to school. Although efforts are made at all levels both internationally and nationally to reduce gender gaps, accelerate girls’ education and monitor and report on progress towards the SDG and Education 2030 targets for girls and gender equality, but the challenge of gender stereotypes, retention and transition rates among the marginalized girls still persist. While these facts keep challenging us to take in time steps, it is equally true that efforts are on and one such model example is of a school in our city that is certainly changing the discourse.

Fatimah Zahra English Medium School for Girls, established in the year 2012 in the old walled city of Vadodara, has been catering to Muslim populace of this area where the girl education opportunities are particularly limited. There is just one Gujarati Medium girl’s school in the area. Majority of the residents of the area are economically and educationally backward and earn their living as auto drivers or lorry pullers. The school is up to class VIII; it is growing year by year until it is upgraded to higher secondary level.

After school hours the school premise is used as Madressa and life-lifelong learning center for girls. The infrastructural facilities in the school are highly satisfactory, it has enough classrooms, a subject room with smart board, Principal’s office, the staffroom, activity room, dining room and the open hall for assembly. Classrooms have moveable furniture to allow group work and are decorated with charts and students’ work (also displayed in the Principal’s office). However, the library need to be extended as the space is too small.

The school follows State Board syllabus and teachers incorporate cooperative learning strategies in their respective subjects, they undergo professional development programmes on a regular basis. Since the year 2012 significant improvements were made and school became very popular. Today the student numbers grew to 1130 with 30 female staff. The school is successful in motivating community and parents to send their girls to school. This growth made the school over-crowded; subsequently the trust members are into the process of establishing pre-primary in a separate building in the nearby area. Now the community of the area have developed trust in the school and respect every activity school organize. They allow their daughters to actively participate at local and district level activities and attend various camps.

It has never happened before, states one of the prominent trust member of the school, who has taken this mammoth task of educating community girls. Emerging from the advocacy and initiative of the trust members of this school, the community invest in cash and kind for a separate pre-primary building for school. Members of the community are contributing their labour, raising funds, and collectively working together to get the legal permissions to ensure the completion of the new building. The trust has further plans to establish a lifelong learning centre for the girls/ women of the community.

This school is successful in changing mindsets of the community, and the people of the community are made to understand the value of educating their daughters. Being an academic advisor for the school, I visit the school regularly and conduct several workshops and orientation programs for the teachers. I witness community not only supporting their daughters to go to school, but actively participating in all the activities. Every member associated with this school spares no efforts to discuss with parents that education matters for all and religion encourages rather that hinders girls to be educated.

The community has understood the value of education and realize that if a girl goes to school she can get a better job and is more capable to help her family. Together, we can overcome challenges and break the barriers to girls’ education, and provide educational and vocational opportunities for all girls and boys, and then their futures will be so much brighter, says one of the Trust members of the school.

As a pathway out of poverty to economic growth, integrating Madressa with formal education, this school is successful in changing the deep rooted mindsets of community and empowering Muslim girls with education. Therefore it will not be wrong to say that policies and programs that are implemented with a strong focus on the community, with help from community or government partners are likely to be successful. Government, civil society and the NGO’s must set the benchmark of performance by implementing policies and programs for girl education and make an impact on girl child education. Therefore it will not be wrong to mention that when educational programs are designed around the unique needs of the given community then these programs become more effective and efficient and make a positive impact.

Fatemah Zehra English Medium School for Girls is one such example of a modest step taken by the dedicated and focused members of the society to educate girl child and within no time the school has progressed in many ways. The highly increasing graph in enrollment and several good practices of this school have paved a way for the school to be called a Model School for Girls.