K'TAKA MUST REVIVE, STRENGTHEN ITS BASIC LITERACY PROGRAMMES

One of the key reasons why the literacy rate among women in Karnataka is a mere 77.3%, slightly better than the national average, is girls dropping out of schools owing to a host of reasons — parental pressure, household burden, lack of infrastructure, less number of high schools closer home, not enough women teachers, etc.

- RISHITA KHANNA & GAYATHRI M KURUP @ Bengaluru

While Karnataka is known for premier institutions and a tech-thriving economy, for every 10 men who can read, nearly two women still cannot. The latest Periodic Labour Force Survey (2023-24) shows 88.1% literacy among men, compared to just 77.3% among women, a gap of 10.8 percentage points.

As per the figures, consolidated by the Karnataka Child Rights Observatory and vetted by UNICEF for the two-day workshop conducted for School Health and Wellness Programme, the overall literacy rate stands at 82.7% for the state.

Neighbouring states like Tamil Nadu and Kerala have managed to bridge this divide, in terms of both gender and literacy, through large-scale re-enrolment initiatives and state-wide literacy missions.

Karnataka introduced programmes like door-to-door surveys to understand the dropout rates, but these programmes remained scattered and have not reached every district with equal intensity.

The distance to schools, particularly secondary schools, the drop in school numbers, specifically after primary level, and the shortage of teachers, including instances where a single teacher handles the school or students from multiple grades are compelled to sit together, have all added to the problem, resulting in dropouts that have further widened the gender gaps.

In regions like Yadgir and Raichur, where both literacy and intervention to improve it remained low, these barriers leave students, mostly girls, at risk of slipping out of the system.

Karnataka in 2016 gave a commitment to the Union government that it will have no dropouts over the next three years. But the state recorded 18,461 dropouts in the 2022-23 academic year, one of the highest totals nationwide, particularly among children aged 6 to 14—the core group mandated under the Right to Education (RTE) Act.