Recurring Policy Recommendations to Promote Education of Girls

• Schools within walking distance, closer to the place of dwelling, if necessary satellite schools for remote hamlets.
• Provide child care facilities/creche within school premise
• Escort for girls, if schools are away from the village or hamlet
• Introduce flexible schools timings and region specific school calendar.
• Provide alternative modes/forms, combine formal with non-formal, condensed coursed for dropout, residential schools (ashram shalas) for special focus groups like nomadic tribes and others.
• Residential condensed education programme for adolescent girls and young women who dropped out of school or never enrolled (Mahila Shikshan Kendra).
• More women teachers in rural areas, with residential accommodation.
• Expand pool of women teachers by lowering qualifications, intensive training (near the place of dwelling), provide regular educational support, organize special condensed courses for dropouts who can be trained to work as teachers, provide secure accommodation for out station teachers, and so on.
• Make curriculum relevant to the lives of poor women who are engaged in battle for survival.
• Recognize the problem of working children, provide special facilities.
• Introduce facilities for 'bridge programs" to enable dropouts to re-enter the school system.
• Provide incentives such as uniforms, textbooks, exercise books, attendance scholarship and free bus passes.
• Involve the community in managing the school through advocacy, mobilization and formation of village education committees with at least 50% women members.
• Improve quality of education; motivate teachers to make learning a joyful exercise.
• Decentralize educational planning and administration; bring it closer to people so that it reflects the special needs and aspirations of community.
• Address management issues that inhibit the implementation of government policy, like grievance redressal, administrators and teachers union's resistance to flexible timings and school calendar, make teachers feel wanted and appreciated.
• Recruit women with lesser qualifications from rural areas, recruit local youth in remote areas where teacher's absenteeism is rampant, appoint teachers to a specific school and so on.
• Mobilize public opinion for primary education and universal literacy in general and women's education in particular. Advocate for greater political will and administrative commitment. Make it a national mission with time-bound 'targets' - a la National Literacy Mission (NLM), National Elementary Education Mission (NEEM).