In Mewat region, schools keep girls away from education

JAIPUR: Ruksana Bano, 55, a resident of Aadipur village in Tijara tehsil of Alwar, which recorded zero literacy for women in the 2011 census report, has no hope of seeing her granddaughters go beyond the primary level.
Aadipur is among the few villages in the state which has zero literacy for women despite having a primary school for the past 12 years.
“Because of the pathetic condition of the school now, I fear that my three granddaughters will never make it beyond the primary level. The irregularity of teachers is fine, but facilities like toilets, which came up a year ago, cannot be used and the lack of drinking water has added to the problem,” said Bano.
Along with 80 parents and students from the Mewat region, Bano had come to Jaipur to attend the state-level conference on Girl Education, organized by the Alwar Mewat Institute of Education and Development (AMIED) in Jaipur, on Monday.
The body claimed that the Mewat region was educationally the most backward in the state and facing apathy of the state government. They claimed that toilets in over 100 schools in Mewat-dominated tehsils — Tijara, Kisengarhbas, Laxmangarh in Alwar and Kaman and Nagar in Bharatpur — were not functional. The report is in stark contrast to the state claims to have toilets in all its schools in 2015.
“Meos are the most backward educationally in the state. Girls’ education has never been a priority for the state and local community, who have only recently started promoting it. This is a reason why the dropout rate here is the highest,” said Noor Mohammad, secretary of AMIED.
Reiterating the claims made by Bano, Mohammad Ameen, a social activist who has worked in Mewat region, shared the status of girl education in Shadipur village in Tijara tehsil which has 95% people from the Meo community. This village recorded 4% literacy level as per the 2011 census and has had an upper primary school for the past 15 years.
“This upper primary school is being run by a single teacher who teaches all subjects together. Now, one can imagine the poor quality of education that is being imparted,” said Ameen.
At the conference, advocacy groups called for having proper student-teacher ratio in this vulnerable region and extend RTE till Class XII. “A study carried out by us has pointed to the absence of female teachers as aggravating the drop out rate among girls. Considering the cultural sensitivity of locals, female teachers should be deputed in these schools to promote girls education,” said Bella Das, executive director of the National Coalition for Education.