NIRJANA SHARMA
Three girls, ninth-graders at a community school in Palpa, were rescued while being trafficked last week. The police arrested their handler, Santosh Karki, a district development committee overseer, after the girls, all under 16, revealed upon questioning that they were being taken to Butwal to work at a hotel where they´d be paid Rs 80,000 per month.

It took no time for the police to realize that Karki had led them astray.

The episode reveals that school textbooks and teachers are not doing enough to help students distinguish between fantasy and reality.
In lack of proper gender responsiveness at schools, girls are easily misled by unscrupulous elements in the society, say experts. 

Performance dips as girls reach higher levels
The government´s flash report shows high enrollment rate among girls at primary level. However, the number sees sharp decline by the time they reach secondary level.

Less girl students seem to make it through school exams, though the reason is not their ability to pass the exams but the tendency to drop out from different grades.

The report also reveals that girls outflank boys in SLC supplementary and exempted exams.

The latest statistic of the Department of Education (DoE) shows that there total 6.4 million students from grade one to 10, including those who appeared in this year´s SLC exams.

Among them, 3.3 million are girls and 3.1 million boys.The gender audit report of School Sector Reform Program states that there is only a marginal difference in promotion rates between boys and girls for grade six to eight

While the promotion rate for boys stands at 88.1 percent, 88.0 percent girls advance to the higher levels each year. Since 2007, girls showed an improved promotion rate than boys at primary level with 84.3 percent surviving to reach grade five compared to 81.7 percent boys. Likewise, the graduation rates at basic level from grade one to eight stands at 60.2 percent for girls and 57.7 for boys.

However, a review of six years of performance in SLC exams of girls shows that the female students are yet to beat boys. From 2006 to 2013, more than 2.2 million students appeared in SLC exams. Among them, 1.1 million were male and 1 million were female. Total 1.2 million students passed in the SLC exams in that period, of them 0.7 million were boys.

Only half of the girls who appeared in the SLC exams in that period passed in their first attempt.

This year, a total of 5,66,085 students appeared in the SLC exams, among which 4,19,352 were regular and 1,46,733 exempted.

By the time girls reach the secondary level, they are under pressure to focus on household activities. Traditionally, elders in the family force girls to learn household stuff at this age, fearing they would never be able to run a family after getting married if they don´t.

“At the age of 16-17, society treats them as marriageable, misleading them. The teachers and textbooks fail to raise the awareness of girls at that age, blunting their growth as is reflected in their performances,” said Prof Pramila Rajbhandari. "Their problems are either underestimated or misunderstood, thus, pushing them behind."

Professor Rajbhandari, a researcher with Room to Read, finds that the stereotypical treatment meted out to girls is more responsible for their poor performance in schools as they grow up.

“The society shapes girls psychology in such a way that they themselves do not realize they are too young to get married during their school days,” Rajbhandari says.

The problem of fewer female teachers
A recent study conducted by Room to Read in 13 community schools of Bardiya reveals that girl students cannot speak to anyone even when they face severe problems at schools. In Bardiya, 52 percent of primary level teachers are female, which drops to 13 percent for lower secondary and five percent for secondary level. The two years trend in school shows that dropout rate of girls has increased in the district as 60 percent of secondary level girl students dropped out there in the academic year 2011/12, with situation worsening further in the next session when the figure reached 64 percent.

"Most of the respondents among 117 schoolgirls said that they feared harassment at school," said the professor.

To make improve participation of women in schools, political parties had pledged in their manifesto published during the first CA poll that female representation in the education sector would be increased to 33 percent. However, only 27 percent of primary level teachers of community schools are female, as per the government´s flash report of last year. Of the total 2,28,923 teachers up to basic (grade 1-8) level, only 87,978 are females. The female teachers are quite nominal at secondary levels.   

Lack of toilet resulting in absenteeism
The national census 2011 shows that around 7.5 million females in the country belong to the age group that goes through the menstrual cycle every month. Girls experience their first menstrual period between the age of 8 and 12. It has been estimated that on an average a schoolgirl is compelled to forgo classes for 250 days due to the lack of proper toilet, till she finishes her secondary level study.

The data of the DoE shows that 9,000 community schools, among the total 28,000, lack girl-friendly toilets. However, there is no projection about the number of women suffering in lack of female-friendly toilets in colleges, public places and even their workplace.

However, the authority vows to add 2,000 more girl-friendly toilets at schools this year. He also stressed on raising the awareness among students on the topic of menstrual hygiene to break the ice on the issue.

source:SHARMA,NIRJANA (2014),"Community schools not gender-sensitive enough to retain girls"  republica,31 march 2014