Muslims lag in education enrolment, says survey

50% in the 5-29 years age group not enrolled in 2014

Nearly half the Muslim population in the age group of 5-29 years is not enrolled anywhere for education in urban areas, according to the 71st round of the survey on education by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) conducted between January and June 2014.

This is the highest among various religious groups.

While 50.4 per cent of Muslims were not enrolled anywhere for education in this age group during the survey period, 48.2 per cent were enrolled and attended their classes. However, 0.6 per cent of Muslims were enrolled but did not attend their classes.

There has, however, been an improvement in the enrolment of Muslims in the age group of 5-29 years in various kinds of education, compared to the previous such survey conducted between July 2007 and June 2008.

There were 53.6 per cent of Muslims who were not enrolled in the previous round. At that time, 44.7 per cent of Muslims were enrolled and attended their classes.

In 2014, while Muslims were the largest religious community in terms of number of people not being enrolled in education in urban areas, in rural areas, 53.1 per cent population of the community enrolled and attended classes in various courses.

Between the two rounds of survey, there has been improvement in terms of education enrolment among various religious communities. Besides Muslims, Buddhists also had a higher number of population - 51.5 per cent - not getting enrolled for education in 2007-08 in urban areas. Similarly, 47.7 per cent of Sikhs also fell in this category. The category of Buddhists were merged into other religions in the latest round. Taking enrolment and attendance as the criteria of the educated people, Christians were the foremost in terms of education, followed by Hindus.