Educational Catastrophe: Economic Factors for Dropouts

Poverty has been a major reason of high dropouts forcing children to prefer to struggle for livelihood to studying

India with its majority of people being poor, economic factors is another major factor leading to school dropouts. The younger students coming from the poor section of the society lacks the basic needs of livelihood, safety and stability at home. Thus, many of them drop out of the school to support family and meet their stomachs.

• Instability in family: A child needs stability at home or at school to carry on his/her education. If there’s no stability at home either due to poverty or certain other factors, the family would have other task other than education which according to them has no immediate return. They would rather send their son or the daughter to work in fields or anywhere where they can earn bread and butter for themselves and the family. Their first priority comes at earning for livelihood and helping their family but never the education. Even frequent skirmishes between the parents can adversely affect the children.
• Limited income or poverty: The limited resources of the family and over population further aggravate the situation. Parents always want their sons and daughters to complete their education and have a secure life in future. But his little income can’t afford for higher classes. He would instead spend all the money to feed the children. Thus, the children have to drop out willing or unwillingly.
• Price rise: Also the rising prices of the books, notebooks and stationeries are not affordable to the poor who are fighting for their stomach. This leaves them with no option but to drop out of the schools
• Corruption: Government, semi government, private and public schools are facing the impact of corruption. Almost every government teachers are not committed to teaching, rather they are after their salary only. This has resulted to more drop outs in government schools comparing to the private ones. Besides, donation for admission and other internal corruption committed by the school staffs add to dropouts.