When you enter the premises of Quality English Boarding School, which is two kilometers away from Krishna Higher Secondary School, you witness another type of gender disparity.With a total of 342 students, boys simply outnumber girls in this school. [break]
The stark disparities have much to do with the nature of schools. While Krishna Higher is a public school, Quality boarding is a privately-run school.
Despite the government´s several programs aimed at ensuring gender parity, parents still prefer privately-run English schools over public schools when they have to enroll their sons. However, this is not the case with their daughters.
“The ages-old mindset of parents has not changed,” says Sudham KC, headmaster of Krishna Higher School. “They still choose English schools for sons and public schools for girls.”
With the growing influence of English schools, the traditional mindset of parents has become even more entrenched in recent times.
“It is largely because parents believe that the money spent for daughters´ education is simply wasted,” KC argues, adding. “On the other hand, they believe that the money spent for sons´ education eventually benefits them. As far as this notion continues to flourish, the disparity between girls and boys is sure to continue plaguing our society.”
According to KC, many people whose daughters are studying in Krishna Higher School have sent their sons to nearby English schools, including Quality Boarding School in Bageshwari village of Bhaktapur district. “The gap is at all levels; right from class one to higher secondary.”
A deep-rooted malaise
At Padmodaya Higher Secondary School, one of a few pre-Rana regime public schools in Kathmandu, girls are outnumbered by boys. Of the total 609 students, 321 are boys while girls´ number is just 288. But, do not misread this data. This does not mean that people here send their sons to public schools along with daughters.
According to Bijaya Laxmi Shrestha, principal of the school, most of students enrolled at public schools in the core area of Kathmandu are village boys brought by well-off families to the valley as domestic help.
“Well-off families mostly bring boys rather than girls from villages and send them to public schools,” Shrestha said. “This is how our school has higher number of boys in comparison to girls.”
Moti Ram Bhatta, who works at the statistics section of District Education Office (DEO) of Bhaktapur, says, “It is difficult to find a public school that has more boys than girls. Almost all public schools have more girls than boys. The situation in private schools is opposite.”
According to the Bhaktapur DEO, of the total 27,429 students enrolled at various public schools, the number of boys is just 12,372 while the number of girls is 15,057, higher by almost 3,000. However, of the total 53,751 students studying in private schools, the number of girls is just 25,015 while 28,736 students are boys in the district.
Similarly, according to the Kathmandu DEO, of the total 103,607 students enrolled in public schools, the number of boys is just 48,326 while 55,281 students are girls. On the contrary, of the total 232,126 students in private schools, 125,114 students are boys while the number of girls is just 107,012.
“This scenario is just not in the valley,” said Dev Kumar Baral, under secretary at the Kathmandu DEO. “The disparity is much more gnawing when you step out of the valley.”
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