Gendered school environment and impact on learning in India

• In Event: Catalysts for change or keepers of tradition? How school environments influence gender dynamics and impact education outcomes

Proposal

Introduction

India has made significant progress in increasing children’s enrolment in school, from 77% of children aged 5–17 years enrolled in 2004/05 to 92% in 2018/19 (National Sample Survey Office, 2006; National Statistical Office, 2020). However, learning levels remain poor for large proportions of children and adolescents in the country. The World Bank estimates that 56% of children were in learning poverty in India (The World Bank, 2022). Furthermore, basic reading and mathematics skills have remained persistently low and stagnant for children aged 10 and above in rural India (Banerji, 2023) and gender differences in learning have increased over time in favour of boys (Jain, 2019). Although the association between pedagogical practices and learning skills is acknowledged in several studies globally, few studies have examined this association in India (Rakshit and Sahoo, 2023; Moore, 2022; Singh and Sarkar, 2015; Santhya et al 2015). We explore the extent to which gendered and hierarchical school environment affects girls’ learning.


Methods

We used data from a cluster randomized trial of an intervention that engaged parents and community members in Gujarat to promote girls’ secondary school completion. Before launching the trial, we interviewed all girls attending the last year of primary school (Class 8) and the first year of secondary school (Class 9) in study villages (N= 1,568). These girls were reinterviewed after completion of the 15-month-long trial (N=1,508). We administered competency tests in literacy and Mathematics. We assessed school environment based on girls’ reports of teachers’ attitudes and practices in the classroom toward students. We used fixed effects regression models to examine the effect of school environment on learning, after controlling for confounding factors, including trial exposure.



Results

School environment was gendered and hierarchical for notable proportions of girls. One-quarter of girls reported that their teachers had conveyed gender inegalitarian attitudes in the classroom. Almost half of girls reported that their teachers had scolded students when they had not understood their lessons or had called them “stupid”. However, fewer than one-tenth of girls reported that their teachers had discriminated against students on the grounds of gender, religion, caste, economic status or physical appearance.

Findings underscore the extremely poor academic performance of surveyed girls. Girls scored, on average, 24% in solving Mathematics problems that they should have learned in previous grades. They performed very poorly in English too, scoring just 10%. Although they performed better in the Gujarati than in the English language competency test, their performance in Gujarati – 36% -- was also far from satisfactory.

Regression results show that school environment affected girls’ learning. Of the four measures of school environment, the most influential was discriminatory treatment by teachers followed by teachers’ expression of gender inegalitarian attitudes, both having a significant negative effect on girls' performance in Mathematics, Gujarati and English.


Conclusions

Findings call for increased investments in interventions that foster equitable environments at the school level, particularly those focused more directly on teachers, to help girls learn and thrive.

Authors

• K G Santhya, Consultant

• Nicole Haberland, Population Council