Exploring factors affecting gender inequality in the completion of higher education in India: a survival model analysis

This report uses longitudinal data from Young Lives to explore gender differentials in dropout rates before completing higher education among 26-year-old young adults in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, India. Using detailed modelling, it finds that young women have a significantly higher risk of dropping out before completing higher education than young men. Furthermore, individual, household and educational factors perpetuate gender inequity in higher education completion, with young adults from disadvantaged social groups and households in the bottom wealth tercile being more likely to drop out than their counterparts. The authors also find that even as young as age 12, indicators such doing paid work and domestic chores, as well as having low cognitive scores, are positively associated with a higher risk of non-completion of secondary school, demonstrating the negative affect of early risks on long-term trajectories. The authors conclude that as the Indian National Education Policy 2020 seeks to achieve gender balance in educational opportunities, these findings are an immensely valuable contribution to policy influencing. This report forms part of a body of research by Young Lives into gender, skills and education. To read more about this, visit our webpage here and for latest updates, follow up on social media

‘Whatever she may study, she can’t escape from washing dishes’: gender inequity in secondary education – evidence from a longitudinal study in India

As universal elementary education is close to realisation there are concerns about secondary education meeting the pressure of increasing number of children moving into secondary levels. Secondary education is today seen not as a luxury, but as a necessary stepping stone towards a better and brighter future. It has been suggested that secondary education may serve as a pathway for students’ advancement, or may appear as the main bottleneck preventing the equitable expansion of educational opportunities (World Bank, 2005). Despite Millennium Development Goal 3 (MDG3) having the target of the elimination of gender disparity in primary, secondary and tertiary education by 2015, gender equity remained unrealised. Although there are many more girls attending school today than ever before, gender equity in secondary school participation remains elusive in many low-income countries. The UNESCO-UIS (2015) study reported that more than 40% of all out-of-school adolescents live in South Asia and girls’ completion of secondary school remains low (UNGEI, 2014). Globally, 83 per cent of lower secondary-school-age children are in either primary or secondary school, dropping to less than 70 per cent in low-income countries.</p

Push Out, Pull Out, or Opting Out? Reasons Cited by Adolescents for Discontinuing Education in Four Low- and Middle-Income Countries

By drawing on Bronfenbrenner’s (1999) ecological framework, this mixed-method paper recognizes school discontinuation not as an event but as a culmination of an interplay of various factors over time. Adopting a life course perspective and analyzing reasons given by adolescents for “not being in school” across the four middle- and low-income Young Lives study countries, three broad categories of reasons for early school leaving emerge. These are push factors, pull factors, and opted-out factors. Findings revealed that pull factors emerge as the greatest contributor toward children discontinuing education as they enter middle and late adolescence. Besides household dynamics and shocks, boys in particular discontinue schooling due to paid work, while girls spend long hours in domestic chores at the cost of attending school. While in-school factors, particularly quality, cannot be ignored, it is important to provide social protection nets to the poorest families in order to achieve Sustainable Development Goal Goal 4.</p

Empowering young women to complete higher education in India new evidence from Young Lives

The Policy Brief argues that provision of a supportive and enabling environment for all girls and young women to stay in education with sufficient resources and time to study is key to enabling them to complete higher education. Without it, investment in higher education will be much less successful in supporting girls to succeed