More girls than boys in Hindi and Urdu-medium schools in Delhi: Report

The UDISE or the Unified District Information System for Education Plus report by the Union Ministry of Education contains information from more than 15 lakh schools, covering nearly 26.5 crore students, across the country.

More girls than boys are studying in Hindi- and Urdu-medium schools in Delhi while more boys are in English-medium schools, as per data in the 2019-2020 UDISE report.

The UDISE or the Unified District Information System for Education Plus report by the Union Ministry of Education contains information from more than 15 lakh schools, covering nearly 26.5 crore students, across the country.

It reveals that Delhi is one of the few states where a majority of students – 59.2% students from class I to class XII – are studying in institutes that claim to have English as the medium of instruction.

A closer look at the numbers shows differing patterns of distribution of boys and girls among mediums of instruction. The total number of boys and girls enrolled in schools in Delhi, according to the report, is 22,08,945 and 19,71,672, respectively.

But there are more girls studying in both Hindi and Urdu medium — 8,62,114 girls and 8,15,119 boys in the Hindi medium, and 14,543 girls and 12,242 boys in the Urdu medium.

On the other hand, there are 13,80,948 boys (62.5%) and 10,94,712 girls (55.5%) studying in the English medium. And while 36.9% of boys are studying in the Hindi medium, among the girls it is 43.7%.

This kind of differing pattern of distribution of boys and girls is also seen in the number of students being sent to government and private schools. While there are more girls than boys across all grades in government schools, it is the opposite across all grades in the city’s 2,652 private schools.

There is a slightly higher number of girls enrolled in government schools from class I to XII – 11,98,026 girls as compared to 11,11,793 boys. But there is a considerable difference between the distribution in private schools, where there are 10,16,700 boys and 6,99,777 girls across grades.

However, across the board in Delhi, the Net Enrolment Rate (NER) of girls is higher than boys from the elementary level to the higher secondary.

NER is the ‘total number of pupils enrolled in a particular level of school education who are of the corresponding official age group expressed as a percentage of the population of the official age-group which corresponds to the given level of school education in a given school year’.

In 2019-2020, the NER for girls at the upper primary level is 98.26 and boys is 93.38; 75.38 for girls and 69.71 for boys at the secondary level; and 51.09 for girls and 44.41 for boys at the higher secondary level.

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