Programme de bourses "Echanges Universitaires"

Education as a tool to rehabilitate street children - Cases from urban slums in Ahmedabad, India

The project in brief

Division
Development Cooperation

Country / Region
India / Gujarat

Partner
Rajesh and Sandhya Bhat, Matrusmruti Trust, Ahmedabad, India and associated NGOs, local communities, government authorities; principal investigators: Marisa Fricker and Sophia Völksen.

Introduction
Education acts as a major tool of development and its positive impact on economic growth and socio- economic factors is widely accepted. It constitutes a basic human right and depicts one of the most crucial ways for achieving overall human development. Universal primary education therefore has been set as one of the major targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by world leaders in the year 2000. However, particularly in developing countries, as India, there is still a long run to go in order to achieve this target. Although significant progress has been made towards universalizing primary education, there are still millions of India’s children who do not have proper education. Even though enrollment rates are high, there are low attendance and completion rates to be found as well as high incidences of school drop-outs. Official numbers indicate that only 66% of the school-going children reach grade 5 (UNESCO Institute of Statistics 2005). Therefore illiteracy is still relatively widespread, especially among the most vulnerable groups such as: Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and women and children living in extreme poverty.

Objective of the project
This project addresses the reasons why children drop out of schools. It holds the notion that two main determinants must be addressed in order to understand the phenomenon of dropping out of schools:

• sociocultural milieu factors which are represented by household characteristics (such as caste, personal assets or educational levels of the hosehold) and the immediate environment of a child, and

• institutional factors dealing with teachers’ performance, the school setting and the children’s perceptions thereof.

Both sets of factors are addressed in the two Master’s theses, using the same data set the authors Sophia Voelksen and Marisa Fricker generated in urban slums of Ahmedabad during a two months research internship in India. A third part of the project deals with both these sets of factors in a rural context. This project was carried out under KFPE-finances by Esther Gloor and will be part of the 2011 annual report to the KFPE.

The empirical survey in urban slums of Amhedabad
The survey included 255 of school attending children and school drop outs in slum communities of the City of Ahmedabad carried out in July-August in the year 2009. Additionally expert interviews and a focus discussion group have been conducted in order to supplement the research with valuable comments on the topic. The two target groups, drop-outs and school attending children were distinguished by gender, religion (Muslim/ Hindu), caste (SC, ST, OBC) and age group. The composition of the sample ensured an equal sex ratio, mixed age groups and caste membership among the children. Furthermore, the research settings were broadly selected to represent children from different religious groups (Hindu and Muslim) and children from different backgrounds (orphans, street children, working children and others). Regarding the educational institutions visited, government, private as well as institutions for disabled children have been taken into consideration.

Theoretical embedding
A core part of the theoretically-based analysis in the MA thesis of Sophia Völksen is the concept of sustainable livelihoods (Chambers 1989, Bohle 2007). According to this approach, the vulnerability of children towards dropping out of primary school was examined on the basis of livelihood assets, the immediate environment and wider society. With regard to the second MA thesis of Marisa Fricker the capital theory of Pierre Bourdieu as well as theories on the reproduction of social inequalities through the school system were of particular importance.

Figure 1 Authors conducting fieldwork in Ahmedabad, India

Household structures, personal assets and socio-cultural aspects as determinants
of school drop-out rates. Cases from Urban slums in Ahmedabad, India.
Master’s thesis, Sophia Völksen

Children`s school performance and perceptions on schools as determinants of
school drop-out rates. A comparison of school attending children and school
drop-outs in urban slums of Ahmedabad.
Master`s Thesis, Marisa Fricker

Contact
Department of Geography/Urban and Regional Studies, University of Basel Prof. Dr. Rita Schneider-Sliwa, Claudia Saalfrank, M.A. Rita.Schneider-Sliwa@unibas.ch, Claudia.Saalfrank@unibas.ch

Rajesh and Sandhya Bhat, Matrusmruti Trust, Ahmedabad, India
mst_edu@hotmail.com