Where have all the schoolboys gone?

Perhaps statisticians claiming poor enrolment and high dropout rates of girls only lack the lens of our press photographers.

Girls outshine boys -- those familiar with our national dailies need look no further than this headline; they know exactly what we’re talking about. It’s our annual summer carnival, that time of the year when the nation celebrates the cerebral faculties of its girl students. One newspaper was even kind enough to give a historical perspective to this national event, managed under the banner of the Central Board of Secondary Education, more familiar to us as the CBSE -- girls have been creating history every year, it informed us, for the last 15 years, starting circa 1991 (so how many years does it take for history to be made?).

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For one whole month starting end-May, when the CBSE results come out, to the end of June, when admissions to colleges finally get over, the nation can easily be made to believe that the HRD Ministry has been doing nothing about the ‘missing’ boys in our educational institutions -- hand out some reservations here, please! Perhaps statisticians claiming poor enrolment and high dropout rates of girls only lack the lens of our press photographers. Pick up any paper any day over the next month for confirmation.

What is, however, most surprising is that there are people around who have been taken by surprise for 15 years at a stretch by the girls who did better than the boys.