Jaynagar is 2 hours by road from Kolkata. For girls living here, secondary education is a far-fetched dream. They are married off before they reach Class 8, which for their parents means one less mouth to feed and for their parents-in-law and husband means one more pair of hands to work. As per a Magic Bus survey conducted across India, women are more informally educated than men (27% when compared to 14% men).
Rabeya Gayen is one of the many young girls who live in Jaynagar. She is a 17-year-old ambitious girl who, despite many challenges, scored 86% in Class 10. She feels that she could have done much better.
She is the eldest among her siblings, and her father is an agricultural labourer with an earning of ₹250 a day. These days, with COVID-19, he barely gets work. Her younger brother, who is 13, helps out her father in the fields. Her brother and sister both used to go to school too, but with schools shut due to lockdown, they stay at home.
Rabeya teaches her younger siblings as they don’t have a smartphone to access any online learning videos. The survey also reported a noticeable difficulty in accessing education virtually: 34% of respondents don’t own a mobile phone, affecting accessibility to study resources. Parents who do own a mobile phone reported they could give their phone to a child for about 6 hours a week.
Rabeya used to go to work with her mother too. They would do odd jobs and get a small income in return. Before COVID-19 too, the family never had enough money to afford books or tuitions.
“Without Magic Bus’ support, I wouldn’t have been able to score 86%. Tata Motors Finance supported Magic Bus scholarship helped me enrol in private tuition classes to better my preparation. Menrolus’ young leaders helped me plan my day ahead. Because I had to work and also help my mother with household chores, I mostly studied during the nights. With the scholarship money, I could buy a few books and notebooks to study,” said Rabeya.
Uddan, a project conceived by Tata Motors Finance and Magic Bus, seeks to empower adolescent girls like Rabeya aged 11 to 17 who reside in various marginalised communities in Jaynagar and other states across India. The intervention ensures the young girls complete secondary school and transition successfully to livelihoods. In doing so, it staves off destabilisers such as child labour, child marriage and gender discrimination, to name a few.
A midline study was conducted to understand the impact of the intervention; it reveals some very optimistic data. School Regularity at baseline was 73% (consistent with the national average). At midline, it was reportedly 86.9%. Of those who do not attend school regularly, menstrual pain was found to be a significant reason.
Aspirations to higher education have gone up from 21.6% to 42.1% with respondents saying they want to complete their graduation. Learning enhancement classes have helped some girls do much better academically. In a Math and Language test administered by an expert group of academics, improvement across grades in both is about 20%.
The pandemic has negatively impacted more girls than boys. We are seeing a higher proportion of girls (almost 47%) reported being involved in household chores during the lockdown as compared to boys (40%). We may therefore observe that girls who have now been seen at home supporting household chores may not find their way back to school as households look for additional working hands.
Therefore continuous engagement with young girls of Jaynagar is critical to ensure all of them get back to school and continue learning. For many, like Rabeya, they understand the challenges that come forth.
Rabeya wants to opt for science in higher secondary, but the school that offers the subject is 15 kms away, and without a stable income, she doesn’t know how she would be able to enrol there. Only if she gets some scholarship or her father starts getting regular work, she can join school again.
She wants to be a doctor someday. The fact that they don’t have any doctors in her village has instigated her to become one. She is ready to work hard to get a degree and become a doctor one day. But she is apprehensive if she will ever get a chance to pursue her dreams.