Universalization of Elementary Education: Challenges, Issues and Efforts

The Indian education system is perhaps the largest system in the world catering the need of millions of students of different socio-economic background. Education is globally acknowledged as the most powerful means of empowerment. Education is utmost important for every child irrespective of its gender. It is disheartening that, even in current modern scenario, some people are still against the education of the girl children. Every child has the right to receive elementary education however, Due to many factors girls are forced to leave school while others never have been provided an opportunity to enroll in schools. Among children not attending schools there are more girls than boys and among illiterate adults, there are more women than women. Many girls continue to dropout that adversely affects the efficiency of the education system and respective progressive expectations. The unfinished task in terms of un-enrolled and out-of-school girl child is the manor challenge. Rigorous and continuous efforts are required to bring and retain girl children under the purview of education system. The community and government schemes in this direction, can jointly play a vital role in bringing and retaining girl children to schools for primary and secondary education. To understand the problems and challenges faced by girls at elementary education level the author conducted a study in education zone Magam. The zone progressed significantly but still it has many areas of concern that are primarily responsible for un-fulfilment of the goals of universal literacy. There are number of problems which become hindrance in the way of education of girls but whatever the reason is if significant efforts were taken this problem can be then tackled easily. So, the authors hope that this study can help us to illuminate some of the complexities around education of the girls at elementary level and bring new insight to policy makers and educational practitioners.