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,haracter of ch~ldren and help them come up ~n llfe L~teracy level tn an area lndlrectly
reflects the ~mportance glven to educat~on ~n that area
The fact that the overall
ilteracy rate ~n the village (63 0%) was h~gher than the Tam11 Nalu rural level (54 6%)
and the nat~onal level (52 1%) showed the Importance glven to educat~on In that area
However there are other areas ~n the state and ~n the country mth h~gher l~teracy levels
(Rao el a/. 1995) School enrollment also reflects the Importance glven to education
The overall enrollment ~n the v~llage was 89 5% belng hlgher ~n boys (93 4%) than ~n
g~ds (85 5%) Thls was found to be stat~st~cally s~gn~flcant (p < 0 05) lnterest~ngly In
splte of the h~gher l~teracy rate(vrde supra) in the wllage compared to the natlonal and
state f~gures the overall enrollment rate was lower when compared to the
correspond~rig f~gures In the state (97 5% 1n1995)and the country (936% In 1987)
(UNICEF 1990 Anonymous 1996) However these d~fferences wuld be due to
d~flerentlrne per~ods arid d~ffere~it technlques used for data collection
Although at the h~gh school level the pro~nrtlon of g~rls and boys attend~ng school was
slmllar, a lower attendance rate ~n g~rls at the pnmary and mlddle school levels
reflected the early dropout ~n thern In the village school the total dmpout rates ~n the
prlrnary and m~ddle school dunng 1995-1996 were 3 6% and 5 8% respect~vely Thls
was much lower than the dropout rates ~n Tarn11 Nadu, whlch were 15 8% and 32 5%
respect~vely for prlmary and m~ddle school levels (Anonymous,l996)
As In other studles (UNICEF 1990), most of the dropout ~n girls and boys between 520
Years of age In tlie current study had occurred at the prlmary school level Analyz~ng
the Class wlse dropout pattern ~n girls and boys dur~ng the year 19951996 (Flgure 6.5)
and also the, school attendance rate pattern ~n the wllage ~t was observed that the