indian council of medical research - Pondicherry University DSpace ...

8, "The ground is dirty. The whole school is dirty. The sheds are not all right" (A
14 year old girl In a group d~scusscon)
Other epidem~oloaical methods
The importance glven to educat~on by a community 1s reflected In the l~teracy and
enrollment rates and the proportlon of chlldren In school age attending school The
relevant data were obta~ne dunng the census
(I) L~teracy rate
The populat~on of the v~llage over 6 years of age was 2,646 out of whlch 1 660 were
literate glvlng a llteracy rate of 63 0% for the village
In the same age group, the
female lhteracy rate (51 7%) was s~gnlf~canlly less than the male l~teracy rate (74 6% p
< 0 05) The age and gender speclflc llteracy rates In the vlllage IS shown In Figure
6 3 It shows that the gender difference In the l~teracy rate was narrowing w~th t~me The
~ducat~onal status of adults over 20 years of age In the v~llage IS glven In Table 6.6
(11) Enrollment
Out of a total of 1 019 ch~ldren between 5 and 20 years of age (study age group) 107
110 5%) were not eirolled The overall educational status of ch~ldren between 5-20
years of age In the study village IS glven In Table 6 7 A s~gn~f~cant d~fference was
absewed In the enrollment rate between the genders w~th respect to the proportlon of
children enrolled w~th more boys than g~rls belng enrolled (p < 0 05) However no
difference was seen w~th respect to the proporl~on of chtldren who had completed X
Standard between the genders (p > 0 05)