Drop in female enrolment in primary schools, technical institutes, reveals economic survey

Within one year, from a total of 24,543 female students in degree programmes like engineering, pharmacy, hotel management, architecture in 2021-22, it declined to only 18,473 in 2022-23, revealed the report.

However, the total takers for technical programmes too declined in last five years. As per the provisional admission data, nearly 98,000 students took admission in 230 institutes against 2.06 lakh in 241 institutes in 2018-19.

In diploma programmes too, female representation in total enrolment fell to half-from 26,026 to 13,847, despite the institutes increasing from 155 to 165 between 2018-19 to 2022-23.

Similarly, within one year the number of female students in 165 diploma institutes fell from 20,336 in 2021-22 to 13,847 in the current academic year. Thus, only 14 per cent are females among the total 94,792 students.

As per the enrolment details, in 230 professional degree institutions where the centralised admission process is undertaken by the Admission Committee for Professional Courses (ACPC) for 76,688 seats, 32,293 were taken, thus leaving 58 per cent seats vacant. The socio-economic review shows declining female representation in primary education too.

In the last five years, the total number of primary schools declined from 45,055 to 44,492 in Gujarat, also reducing the number of girls schools within the same period. The number of girls schools dropped from 1,403 to 1,290 from 2017-18 to 2021-22, respectively. Over 560 primary schools and 113 girls’ schools were closed down in the last five years, the report reveals.

The most number of primary schools for girls closed were reported in Ahmedabad as the number fell from 59 to 51, followed by Jamnagar that had 86 girls schools in 2021-22 that fell to 72. Surat saw a drop from 115 to 113 and Vadodara from 59 to 57 schools in the number of girls’ schools. Among 33 districts, Kutch has the highest number of girls-only primary schools. In 2021-22, Kutch has 132 girls primary schools while Aravalli district has the least-1-girls school.

Similar decline was reported in the enrolment of girls in primary schools in last five years —from 41.21 lakh to 39.91.

However, within the last one year, female enrolment increased marginally from 39.80 lakh to 39.91 lakh. Moreover, the overall enrolment in these total primary schools has also reported a continuous decline despite increase in number of schools.

In 2017-18, a total of 88.57 lakh students were enrolled across 45,055 primary schools in Gujarat. This, over the last five years, has declined to 84.78 lakh enrolled in 44,492 schools in the year 2021-22. However, there was a marginal increase of nearly 0.13 lakh-from 84.65 lakh enrolment to 84.78 lakh in the last one year.