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

observed that the propohon of girls attending pnmary and m~ddle school was
s~gnlflcantly less than the proport~on of boys attending the same (pnmary school 75 1%
for girls, 00 5"X) lor boys, mrddle school 71 3'h for glrls, 81 7% for boys) Ilownvnr, nt
the high school level, the attendance rate In girls and boys were comparable (54 4% vs
52 4% respectively) The fall In attendance rate from m~ddle school to h~gh school was
greater In boys than In girls Thls 1s l~kely to be due to lack of senousness w~th respect
to stud~es on the part of boys, or, the need for them to contnbute to the Income of the
famlly Whereas In the case of glrls, it 1s poss~ble that those who complete rn~ddle
school are motrvated to continue wrth the~r educabon (~f they can afford), as they are
senous about taklng up jobs The opportun~t~es for jobs for girls are better than before
In many parts of lnd~ and the developing world, the dropout rate has been reported to
be higher In glrls than in boys (UNICEF,1994a) In Rapsthan, the drop out rate In g~rls
was as hlgh as 57 0% (UNICEF,1990) In Maharashtra, it has been reported, that the
number of dropouts In g~rls was h~gher than boys at all levels of schooling
(Nagpure,l992) In Tam11 Nadu, the dropout rate In girls (17 0%) was marginally h~gher
than boys (14 9%, Anonymous,l996) In the study wllage, although the dropout rate In
glrls (20 9%) was h~gher than boys (16 6%), the d~fference was not statlstlcally
s~gn~f~cant (p > 0 05) The causes of dropout were however d~fferent for girls and boys
Poverty was the most common cause for dropout In girls, whlle lack of Interest and poor
performance were the chlef causes of dropout In boys
Qual~tatlve research showed that most often boys stopped going to school on thelr
own due to lack of motlvatlon and the deslre to earn, whrle girls were stopped because
the parents could not afford or they were requlred for domestlc help
Menarche was
not an Important cause of dropout Occasionally, parents who could not afford, used ~t