“Unless every child can reach their full potential, humanity never will,” said Penny Mordaunt.
This sentence can not be any truer. Education is a powerful tool, and essential for woman, and without access to it, the talents of thousands might go unnoticed and unfulfilled.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a massive impact on all walks of life, almost all industries faced its repercussions. However, education was among one of the worst-hit spheres. With schools all over the globe closing and 1.2 billion kids forced to stay home, the education field felt the ripples.
Directly or indirectly, the pandemic has affected girls’ education to a great extent. Reports estimate that 2.8 million girls in South and West Asia face the threat of never even returning to school. And these are just the statistics from one part of a continent! Imagine the number of girls all over the world who may never return to school.
The pandemic has had bad ‘economic’ repercussions, with families falling under the poverty line. The lockdown caused numerous workers to lose their job and break the flow of income that helped fuel their girls’ education. With thousands of families struggling to even put two square meals on the table, the girl child’s education is simply not the priority.
If you were given the choice to choose between food or your child’s education what would you choose? In many instances, if the girl has siblings, and if the family manages to collect some money, the brother is sent to school. It is estimated that almost 10 million secondary school girls in India could drop out of school due to the pandemic.
Also, the pandemic led to a humongous shift in teaching style and pattern, with almost all school switching to e-learning. E-learning requires two major things, a device and an internet connection, and both of them don’t come cheap. Most families are unable to afford this, causing the girls to drop out.
A report on girl-students in rural Maharashtra stated that “most of the families whose children go to government schools have one smartphone with internet and, according to teachers, parents would prefer to continue boys’ online education instead of that of girls.”
Many families may also choose to pull out girls from school and either marry them off or put them to work. Even in the 21st century, girls are still treated as a ‘burden’, with families wanting to get ‘rid’ of them. “Up to 2·5 million more girls around the world are at risk of marriage in the next 5 years because of the COVID-19 pandemic,” a report titled ‘Global Girlhood Report 2020’ by Save The Children warns.
Financial issues caused by the pandemic may force families to pull out girls as they simply can’t afford their education. Unemployment, financial limitations, basic resource scarcity: all this is bound to increase the drop out rates among young girls.
“The NSSO’s 75th Round Survey on education suggests that in rural India, of every 100 female students who drop out of secondary school (class 10), twenty do so because they are engaged in domestic activities…”
If each one of us decided to join hands and even contribute in the littlest of ways, the issue can be solved.
“Girl’s education is the single best investment any society can make!” – Carol Bellam.