Four days before Union Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi hosts a UNESCO-sponsored three-day conference on ‘‘Education for All’’, UNESCO itself made adverse comments on the high percentage of girls staying out of school in India. According to the annual global report on education released in New Delhi today, India is unlikely to have ‘‘gender parity’’ in school enrolment either at the primary or secondary level even by 2015.Director of UNESCO’s EFA Global Monitoring Report Team Christopher Colclough said data collected till 2000 shows that ‘‘India is lagging behind Bangladesh’’ in ensuring gender parity in school enrolment. India is one of the many developing countries where nearly two-thirds of the children not attending schools are girls.True, Joshi’s Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA) gathered momentum only after 2001 and his separate programme to ensure better enrolment of girls started only in September this year but Colclough would not release any ‘‘good progress’’ certificate to the Centre just now. Asked to comment on whether low-cost infrastructure like alternate schools would be able to provide quality education, Colclough said: ‘‘We would have to wait and see.’’But, he did describe the steps now being taken as ‘‘positive’’. He pointed out that India is too diverse a country and the problems of ensuring free education for all or improving the ratio of girls going to school varies from region to region. Of the South Asian countries, he identified Bangladesh, which has taken measures to correct gender disparities in primary education. He lauded the educational NGOs for bringing more girls to school in countries where fundamentalists are active, like Iran. The report reveals how Bangladesh has travelled miles in achieving gender parity in education. For example, in the year 2000 itself, it had an equal number of boys and girls attending schools at the primary level — a feat, which India will not be able to accomplish even by 2005. Of course, Bangladesh’s resources are not enough and according to UNESCO’s predictions, it may not be able to send an equal number of girls to secondary schools by 2015.But India’s situation is pathetic. The UNESCO report focuses on gender parity and concludes that its school enrolment figures may not have an equal number of boys and girls even by 2015 both at the primary and secondary levels. Of the 128 countries surveyed by the EFA monitoring team, India comes in the last category of 12 countries described as ‘‘at risk of not achieving the goal by 2015’’ in respect of both primary and secondary education. For company, India has countries like Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Iraq and Papua New Guinea. It is not that population is the stumbling block. China has achieved gender parity at the primary level though it may have to wait for many years before it can hope to accomplish the same at the secondary level.India is a signatory to the Dakar Framework of Action which decided in 2000 that the countries would try to achieve the goal of gender parity in enrolment by 2005 and universal education for all by 2015. Joshi’s SSA is aimed at achieving universal education by 2010.
