Easy jobs at malls luring students out of schools

Updated on: Friday, October 21, 2011

Dropping out of school is not a phenomenon restricted to villages. More students, even in a city like Mumbai, are giving up on higher education to earn a livelihood. The trend has come as a surprise to school principals and educationists.

They say while it is understandable that students in villages are forced to quit education to support their families, most students in cities do not have such a compulsion; yet they are opting out of schools—consciously—to earn money.

“In cities, till the eighth standard, students regularly attend school and appear for examinations. But immediately after that the class strength drops,” said Arundhati Chavan, president, Parent-Teacher Association United Forum. “In many cases, parents are not even aware that their children are hunting for jobs under the pretext of attending school,

“This is the latest trend in many schools, both aided and unaided. I know of girls who quit school after standard X to join beauty parlours and boys who quit to join call centres and food joints at malls across Mumbai.”

An NGO, Light of Life Trust, which has studied the dropout phenomenon in the state, interviewed school students on their reasons for quitting studies. “The answers were disturbing. We found that the students were more interested in making money than completing their education. They were very sure that by learning a little bit of English in school, they would have enough skills to make it to a job and survive,” said Villy Doctor, the NGO’s founder. “We had a hard time convincing the students otherwise.”

Many principals have noticed the trend in their schools and are not happy about their inability to do anything about it. “Even when we try to convince such students—in front of their parents—to come back to school and complete their education, they give us so many reasons against it. They say that do not need to attain a degree to land a good job,” said the principal of a government-aided school in Navi Mumbai. “In the end, even their parents become convinced that working and earning money is a better option.”

Easy jobs at malls luring students out of schools

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