FIGURING IT OUT
Playing hookey?
Pothik Ghosh
THERE is a bunch of children, which when it comes to homework, is more
diligent than any. And yet it’s precisely such sincerity that compels them
to drop out of schools. That is completely mystifying. Unless, of course,
one shuns the ease of conventional vocabulary. For these unfortunate kids,
all poor, homework is far far away from schools and studies. Unlike for
their more privileged counterparts, homework is as quotidian as household
chores, subset of a larger category called familial duties.
A paper published in the Economic and Political Weekly (December 23-29,
2006), which is based on a survey of school dropouts in and around Guwahati,
Assam, conclusively establishes the relationship between school dropout and
familial duties. That relationship is especially important because of India’s
high dropout figures. Union HRD ministry’s provisional, all-India dropout
figures for 2001-02 show that while 39% of students enrolled in class I
dropped out before they finished primary school (classes I-V); 54.6% and 66%
of them left school before they finished their middle (till class VIII) and
high (till class X) schools respectively.
Familial duties – which include both household chores and outdoor work
done with parents – are non-remunerative in nature. Data from the 50th round
(July 1993-June 1994) of the NSSO indicates that the highest proportion of
children helping in household chores were from among dropouts followed
respectively by those children who are attending school and those who have
never been to school. Also, the sex differential was highest among the
dropouts (40.8% of urban dropouts who helped in household chores were girls,
while only 28% were boys) followed by those who had never been to school and
those attending school in that order. The situation in rural areas is
virtually identical; save one slightly counter-intuitive fact: the rate of
female dropouts engaged in household chores in cities is slightly (0.2
percentage point) higher than in villages. (See Table 1.)
To be more specific, the Guwahati study has shown that the decision to
drop out is generally selfinduced. (See Table2.) The survey also looked at a
set of crucial variables and how they determine continuance/discontinuance
in school. It found, for instance, that the variable ‘cared for doing well
in studies’ as the most important determinant, vis-a-vis dropping out of
school.
The survey discovered that those who did not care much for doing well in
studies were 7.7 times more likely to drop out than those who did. Also, the
likelihood of dropping out, in such circumstances, increases by 2.7 times as
a student moves from primary school to a higher stage. But the most
important variables that the survey looked into were ‘bringing water for
family’ and ‘working with parents in outdoor activities’. They enabled the
survey to unequivocally bring to the fore the fact that the level of
engagement of children in familial duties has inverse relation ship with the
likelihood of their dropping out of school. It found that children who
perform these two sets of tasks regularly are 3.7 and five times more
likely, respectively, to leave school than children who never or rarely
engage in such work.