Back to school, and a new beginning
Pratham's Second Chance project helps women and girls who dropped out of school pass their board exams, offering them a new beginning
When she was in the eighth grade, her grandmother decided bahut ho gaya (she had studied enough. And so Afsana Khan never saw the inside of a school again. Married off a few years later, the unease set in when her children began attending English-medium school, and she couldn’t help with their homework.
Then a friend told Afsana about Pratham’s Second Chance project at Jaipur’s Eidgah, close to where she lived. It had been set up for women and girls like her, girls who had dropped out of school but wanted to clear their 10th board exams.
“I hadn’t entered a classroom in 16 years,” Afsana laughs. Plus she knew that the intensive daily classes were not a free pass from the housework that would remain her responsibility. And then, there was the extended family and neighbours who scoffed at the idea of a grown woman going to “school”.
But the idea appealed to her husband. Just go, he said.
When the results were declared, Afsana had passed—with 71.83%. “It silenced all those who had been questioning my decision to study,” she says. “It’s given me a lot of status in the family.”
The results also changed her in ways she couldn’t have imagined. The 32-year-old has now filled out the form for grade 12, completed a basic computer course and volunteers at a local NGO.
She’s also a passionate advocate for Second Chance, mobilizing girls in her family and neighbourhood, and urging them to complete their 10th grade.
Enrolment rates of 96% tell of modern India’s success in getting kids into schools. The challenge now is getting them to stay.
The relationship between girls and school can be fragile. “Although secondary school enrolment has been rising over time, for many reasons, some girls and women are not able to finish their 10th standard exam,” says Rukmini Banerji, CEO, Pratham Education Foundation.
So much about life makes girls vulnerable. The secondary school to which she has to transition might be too far from her village, making the daily commute difficult. She might find the lessons getting progressively harder. If she fails the eighth or ninth grade, her family might pull her out of school. A change in family circumstances —a mother falls ill, a father loses his job—often means she will be asked to step up with housework or get involved with small income-supplementing work, leaving her with no time to go to school.
“Passing the board exam in the 10th opens up opportunities,” points out Banerji. “Our experience is that when a chance to complete 10th becomes possible locally and you find that you are not alone and support is available, many women come forward and succeed.”
Since it began in 2011, the Second Chance programme has enrolled over 35,000 girls and women. While the goal is the board exam, the nine-month programme begins with foundational concepts in maths, science and English and includes life skills—decision-making, financial management, leadership, and communication skills.
The pass rate, says Second Chance, is an impressive 80%.
Often the biggest obstacle to getting the women and girls to join is convincing the family, says Seema Parveen who runs the programme’s 13 centres in Jaipur. “There are a lot of restrictions on girls. Families worry about their safety,” says Parveen. Many of the girls and women have never stepped out of their mohallas alone. Even when they come to class, they are dropped off and picked up by either a parent or a male relative.
At Jaipur’s Shastri Nagar, many of the girls in the class had dropped out during Covid-19 because they couldn’t cope with online classes. Now they’re back and dreaming of careers ranging from lawyer to nurse, police to even politician.
And some stories just have exceptionally happy endings. When Alpina cleared her board exams after having dropped out in the 9th grade due to Covid-19, her 40-year-old mother figured, why not? She had been married off as a young girl and was helping supplement the family income by making bangles at home. “I used to drop Alpina for her classes and thought, ‘Why can’t I also study’?”
And, so the mother enrolled, and passed in June. She’s now filled up the form to clear the 12th exam. “I’m not going to make bangles forever,” she grins.
Namita Bhandare writes on gender. The views expressed are personal