NEW DELHI: The ground reality remains grim for girls who want to study. The recently released National Family Health Survey (NFHS) reveals that the overall 69% of females age six and over has ever attended school. But only one in seven girls completed 12 years of schooling and another 10% managed 10 to 11 years of formal education.

While the cost of schooling was the biggest reason for children of either gender not attending school among those who wanted to, the other major reasons have a distinct gender skew. Household work, safety concerns, the distance of the school from home and early marriage were the other major reasons that girls in India don’t attend schools .

As a result, the median number of years of schooling completed was just 4.4 for girls compared to 6.9 for boys. The survey was conducted in 2015-16 and revealed that girls show more interest in schooling and recorded fewer failures than boys.

Given that costs are a major deterrent, it is no surprise that girls in the lowest one-fifth of the population by wealth completed a median of zero years of schooling, compared with 9.1 years for those in the wealthiest one-fifth.

Distance from home is a significant factor in discouraging girls from attending school raises questions about the move by various state governments to close schools in rural areas in the name of ‘rationalisation’. Experts fear that this would further reduce the number of girls going to schools.

Despite these negatives, the picture has improved over a decade. Among females, the median number of years of schooling increased from 1.9 years in NHFS-3 (2005-06) to 4.4 years in NHFS-4 (2015-16). It still remains lower than for males, where the jump was from 4.9 years in NHFS-3 to 6.9 years in NHFS-4.

Over the same period, the percentage of females and males with no schooling decreased from 42% of females and 22% males to 31% of females and 15% of males.