Home Environment as Strong Determinant in Academic Involvement of Female Students in Dhekia Gram Panchayat of Saltora C . D . Block , Bankura District

Education is a learnt behaviour, which shapes and moulds the nature of a human being by transforming him/her into a human resource and helps in social progress. Children start learning in the lap of their parents. They are bought up by accumulating the knowledge gained from the interaction with the family members. This interaction varies from one family to another. Even when they start going to an institution for the formal education, home environment leaves an influence on his/her attitude towards education. In addition to institutional influence, proper understanding of the impact of home environment is essential for taking due care in development of human resource. Backwardness of the female students in different hierarchies of the educational sector is a major concern in India as well as in West Bengal since a very long period. In spite of ample efforts to increase the rate of enrolment and to develop the quality of education in both national and state level, the progress in terms of actual involvement in educational activities is not up to the mark in many cases. In the light of this background, a grass-root level study has been conducted to understand the role of home environment on determining the academic involvement of the female students belonging to different hierarchies of tribe-caste continuum in a rural context of Bankura District, West Bengal. It aims to identify the major components of home environment, which determine the level of cohort specific academic involvement in the type of families from different social background. In order to retrieve various perspectives on their home environment, we surveyed female students reading in VIII —XII and belonging to the age group 13 to 18 years. From the micro level analysis, it has been found that caste and tribal identity based disparity as well as family type wise differences in level of academic involvement (LAI) is profound in the study area. Home environment is having a significant positive influence over LAI of female students. Factors like economic status of the family, parents’ educational level, fathers’ occupation, parents’ support for education of their daughters have shown a positive impact over LAI. On the other hand, mothers’ engagement in different works outside the home, time invested by the cohort in household works/day and exposure to domestic violence is hindering LAI significantly in the study area. However, this study fails to find any significant influence of the number of siblings, parents’ support for economic independence as well as mobility of their daughters on actual involvement in academic involvement of adolescent girl students in the concerned area.


Introduction
It is well known that India is characterised by a unique social fabric reflecting the diversity in the existing socio-cultural settings and West Bengal as one of its states, shows no exception.
The key purpose of this research is to probe and understand the determinants of home environment that drives the female students (across the spectrum of tribe-caste hierarchies) to academic involvement.The study takes place at a grass-root level located in Dhekia Gram Panchayat of Saltora C.D. Block, Bankura District.
Tribe-caste composition represents one of the multifaceted social relations, which are present within the broader Indian society.Heredity and hierarchy based caste system controls the Hindu society of India as a 'dynamic functional unit' since a long period.Bramhins are placed in the highest order in the caste hierarchy.The others (Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and the Shudras) are placed in orders after the Brahmins maintaining a respectable distance from one another.India is also a home to different tribal communities (Sarkar, 2000, Ahmed, 2012).Scheduled Caste category contributes to 16.2 % of Indian population (Census of India, 2011).8.2 % of the Indian masses consist of the Scheduled Tribe population (Census of India, 2011).Most of these communities are continued to be neglected, marginalised, isolated from the main stream of Indian society and characterised by economic and political backwardness (Gurulingaiah, 2007;Xaxa, 2014 andHebbar, 2014).Education helps to 'produce desirable changes' in human behaviour for the 'all-round development of their personalities' (Mangal, 2015).Moreover, education plays an instrumental role in bringing about positive changes in holistic development of a country by transforming a human being to a resource through the enlightenment of his/her inner capabilities (Sen, 1999 andSaldanha, 1999).Unfortunately, even after 70 years of independence, inter-group and intra-group disparity in terms of attaining a minimum level of education still hinders the overall development process in many areas and in different steps of the formal educational system of India including West Bengal (Raju, 1988;Stromquist, 1990;Raju, 1991;Dreze and Gazdar, 1999;Tilak, 1983;Alam and Raju, 2007;Chouhan, 2013;Choudhary, 2014;Ramachandran, 2016).According to Sen (1999, pp: 14 to 22), disparities in education as well as 'Indian educational priorities' are the indication of the 'deep rooted inequalities of economic and social powers' that play a direct role in limiting the 'freedom' and 'well-being' of the Indian masses in general and 'relative deprivation of women' in particular."The interplay of socio-economic inequalities and gender relations creates a complex web that either promotes or impedes girls' ability to go through schooling.While economic disparities and social inequalities are certainly important, a number of researches argue that cultural beliefs and practices and regional characteristics play an important role" (Colclogh et al., 2000, pp: 5-27 as cited in Ramachandran 2016 p: 33).In India, specifically in rural areas, adolescent girls, especially those attaining puberty face far more struggles and restrictions when compared to the boys (Morgan, 1993).The period of adolescence brings about substantial changes in the physical, psychological and social development of a human being.Education, which is a product of the continuous interaction between human being and the environmental stimuli, goes through different changes by keeping pace with changing pattern of 'stimulus-response' process in adolescent period (Rapheal et. al., 2014, p. 38).Now a days, the role of psychosocial well-being has been given ample focus in controlling the students' educational outcome in adolescence.Even the Working Group on the Child's Rights of India for the 12 th Five Year Plan (2012-2017) has recommended mainstreaming of adolescents in the policy framework by addressing their psycho-social wellbeing (Choudhary, 2014).Many researches now prioritise the study of actual student engagement in educational activities, rather than rely upon counting only the numerical figures of enrolment rates to predict the students' educational outcomes or future dropouts (Berger and Milem, 1999;Webber et. al., 2013;Babatunde and Olanrewaju, 2014).Involvement in educationally purposeful activities has strong positive influence on the academic outcomes leading to a greater satisfaction and academic success (Hu and Polivy, 1991;Kuh et. al, 2008;Webber et al, 2013;Çalişkan, 2013).Home, being a sociobiological unit shows much influence on the basic education of a child (Dhall, 2014).Moreover, home environment plays a crucial role in developing the personality traits as well as fulfilling the physical, moral, intellectual, emotional, social and educational needs during adolescence (Singh, 2011).Family as a 'primary kinship unit and basic social group' represents the basis of all human ventures and deeds.It carries out different aspects of sexual, reproductive, economic, and educational functions (Jha, 1999).The breaking up of traditional joint extended families 1 and shift towards nuclear families 2 with different changes in socio-cultural needs particularly in post-independence period, has much control over the changing nature of the psycho-social adjustments at adolescent period (Sarkar, 2000, p: 71 andChoudhury, 2014, p: 37).Family factors like parents' involvement and support exerts ample influence over the 'psycho-social adjustment' of the adolescent students providing various scopes for 'academic success' (Shek, 1997as cited in Parmar, 2014).A 'stimulating atmosphere' provided by a good family background, can help a student to get better educational outcomes (Badola, 2013).The opportunity cost of education, particularly for the female counterpart of society, is likely to be affected by lower socio-economic status of the family wherein she belongs to (Raju, 1988;Croll, 2006).Effect of sibling size on children's educational outcomes may vary in different spatio-temporal contexts but many researches confirm the negative relationship 1 When a married couple forms a family by residing together with all their married and unmarried offspring, it is called a joint extended family (Sarkar, 2001: 66) 2 Nuclear families are the simplest form of families having husband-wife and their off springs (Sarkar, 2001: 64).
between the sibling size and girl child's schooling, particularly in developing countries (Li et al., 2014) For instance, as argued by Kandiyoti (1997), bride-price based marriage system in a 'patrilineal-patrilocal complex' poses lesser value for daughter's role in contribution to the household economy in the 'classic patriarchal society' of countries like India.Household level strategies for economic independence or for mobility of boys and girls at adolescent period controls the gender based allocation of the basic resources like education and health (Wolf, 1997).Gender role perception in society, priorities for male child than girls and sex segregated norms in household level, higher engagement in household works, regulations for early marriage of girls, can still be considered the major barriers for the equality of development of girls in every social strata (Desai and Krishnaraj, 1990;Bhadra, 1999).
There remains ample evidence highlighting that the home environment plays a key role over meaningful access to education in adolescent period for both girls and boys (Desai and Krishnaraj, 1990;Wolf, 1997;Bhadra, 1999: Singh, 2011;Dhall, 2014;Choudhury, 2014).These literatures show the key household level factors that limit girls' access to education all over the place.Yet, there are no micro-level research investigating the scenario of household level mechanism that controls girls' education.As stated earlier, this research therefore focuses on a micro-spatial location of Saltora C.D. Block, Dhekia Gram Panchayat Bankura District.Using a holistic approach, the study seeks to understand the role of different aspects of home environment on girls' actual academic involvement in different types of families from different hierarchies of tribecaste continuum in a rural context of the study area.It is an attempt to identify the household level factors that propagates or limits the actual academic involvement of female students in their adolescence.
The next section discusses the objectives and methodolgies.Following this, the final section discusses the findings.

Objectives
As already stated, this study was conducted to fulfil the following objectives:  To probe the level of academic involvement among female students in different type of families from the castetribe continuum. To understand the role of home environment in academic involvement of female students. To identify the dominant components of home environment controlling the level of academic involvement of the cohort.

Selection of the Cohorts
Total 45 female students from class VIII to XII and between the age-bracket of 13 years to 18 years have been included in the whole survey process.These students belong to different family backgrounds.Thus, the distribution of caste and family type of the cohort has been shown in Table 1.Face to face interview with the cohorts and their parents/guardians through structured and semi-structured questionnaire, psychological scales and direct field observations have been used as the major tools for collection of the primary data.

Components
Consulting various literature from different disciplines of social sciences, following components have been chosen to understand the role of home environment on the level of female students' academic involvement (Table 2).Primary data have been collected from field survey to use these components in the study.

Methods of Data Analysis and Representation
Quantitative

Status of Different Components of Home Environment
Home environment is a production of the symbiotic relationship between various components ranging from economic condition of the family to the mental set-up of its members to the concerned issue.Therefore, to understand the home environment as a determinant of students' academic involvement in a holistic way, the components of which it is made up of have been studied minutely.

Pattern of Economic Status
Joint families belonging to general caste bear the highest economic status (56) followed by SC nuclear (43.43) as well as SC joint (41.5) families.ST students belong to the economically weakest families as mean economic status for both joint (34.2) and nuclear families (30.06) from this category are lower than the other two groups.Among the tribal families, joint families have higher economic status than nuclear families (Figure 2).

Educational Level of Parents
Very disappointingly, low level of education among parents can be observed in the four selected mouzas.Here, mean year of schooling has been calculated by making an average of the years spent in school by the parents.

Fathers' Mean Year of Schooling
Fathers' mean year of schooling in joint families from general caste is highest (10.167) followed by nuclear families of GC (4.71) and ST (4.19).Nuclear families of SC families (0.71) show the lowest value in this case followed by joint families of ST(1.6) and SC (2.25) communities.Fathers of only two students from GC joint families have studied upto H.S. Illiteracy is maximum among the SC families 81.81%.(Figure 3).

Mothers' Mean Year of Schooling
In the case of mothers' mean year of schooling too, inter group as well as intra group differences have been traced.Illiteracy or very low level of education is profound among the students' mothers.Mothers from GC joint families have highest mean year of schooling (but only 5.67) followed by ST nuclear families (2.62).ST joint families show lowest value (0.2) followed by joint (0.57) as well as nuclear families (0.5) of SC communities and GC nuclear (1.57) families (Figure 4).

Fathers' Occupation
Fathers of 85.71% of the cohorts from GC nuclear families are farmer and only 14.29% have source of income like business or job in private (Pvt.)companies whereas in joint families, this percentage share is 50% for both occupations (farmer and business or worker in private company).The category of daily labour is highest among SC joint families (50%) and ST nuclear families (50%) followed by ST joint families (20%) and SC nuclear families (14.29%).The percentages of farmer and business holder or worker in private companies in SC joint families are 25% and 25% respectively.Share of these two occupational categories are 31.25%and 18.75% in case of ST nuclear families as well as 40% and 0% in ST joint families respectively (Figure 5).

Mothers' Occupation
Non-engagement in any income generating activities is highest among GC joint families (50%) followed by ST joint (40%) as well as nuclear families (18.75%) and SC nuclear families (14.29%).On the other hand, 81.71%, 25% and 14.29% of the cohorts' mothers are engaged in different works like cooking of midday meal scheme in schools in SC nuclear, SC joint and GC nuclear families respectively.Percentage of agricultural labour (marginal) is highest among GC nuclear (85.71%) families followed by ST nuclear and joint families (81.25% and 60%), GC (50%) and SC (50%) joint families (Figure 6).

Number of Siblings
Average number of siblings are maximum among ST joint families (3) where as it is minimum among SC joint families (1).ST nuclear families have second highest value (2.56) in this case, followed by SC nuclear (2.29), GC joint (1.83) and GC nuclear (1.71) families (Figure 7).

Average Time Spent in Household Work
Students in SC joint families have to spend maximum time in household work (in average 6.12 hours./day).GC students from joint families are least engaged in household work (1.17 hour/day).Students from ST joint families, ST nuclear families, SC nuclear families and GC nuclear families have to spend 3.7 hours, 2.59 hours 2.57 hours and 1.5 hours in a day respectively (Figure 8).

Violence or Abuses Perceived by Cohort
There are 50% (highest) students in SC joint families and ST nuclear families, who have agreed with the fact that they have perceived different forms of domestic violence or abuses like beating family members particularly cohort's mother, using filthy language in household level, undesirable touches, directly and/or indirectly etc.In case of general caste, students from joint families (16.67%) have supported the fact more than nuclear families (14.29%-lowest among all).40% students from ST joint families and 28.57% students from SC nuclear families have supported this kind of problems (Figure 9).These findings suggest that domestic violence remains pandemic across lines of caste and class (Gallin, 1997;Sarkar, 2010;Choudhary, 2013;Vauquline, 2015;Ghosh and Choudhuri, 2015;Banerjee, 2017).

Parental Support in Education of Cohort
Parents' support in cohorts' education is highest among GC joint families (56.5) followed by ST nuclear families (45.94),GC nuclear families (43), ST joint families (41).SC families have shown less support for cohorts' education, that is, 40.75 and 40.14 in joint and nuclear families respectively (Figure10).

Parental Support for Economic Independence of Cohort
GC joint families have highest support (7) for the economic independence of the students followed by ST nuclear as well as joint families (6.69 and 6.4).Here, very interesting fact is that in GC nuclear families, parental support for the girl students' economic independence ( 5) is lower even when compared to the SC families (nuclear-5.71,joint-6) who have least support for girls' education (Figure 11).

Parental Support for Priority of Education than Marriage
Here, ST nuclear families have highest support (6.81) for priority of education than marriage followed by GC (6.67) and ST (5.67) joint families.On the other hand, SC joint families have least support for priority of education (4) followed by SC (4.86) and GC nuclear (4.86) families (Figure 12).

Parental Support in Mobility of Cohorts
In this case, GC joint families have highest support (7.67) in mobility for female students followed by ST nuclear (6.89) and joint (5.6) families.GC joint families have lowest support (3.57) for mobility followed by SC joint (4.5) as well as nuclear (4.86) families (Figure 13).

Level of Empowerment at Home
Level of empowerment at household level is also highest among GC joint families (67.17) followed by SC joint families (65.75) and SC nuclear families (57), GC nuclear families, (54.57),ST nuclear (53.81) as well as joint families (lowest, 47.8) (Figure 14).

Pattern of Mean Academic Involvement
Differences in terms of mean level of involvement in academic works have been observed in different type of families belonging to different caste groups (Figure 15).On one hand, highest academic (101.17)involvement is found among the girl students in joint families of general caste (GC) followed by nuclear families of general caste (99.43), nuclear (18.625) and joint families (76.6) of scheduled tribes (ST).On the other hand, Scheduled caste (SC) students from nuclear as well as joint families have lowest and second lowest value in mean level of academic involvement (Figure 15) .Relatively higher socio-economic status and higher position in the social hierarchy have given the GC girls to achieve higher level of academic involvement when compared to SC and ST girls.Very astonishingly, though SC families are economically better than the other families (Figure 2), LAI of the students are lowest among all (Figure 15).Unwillingness to change the traditional customs for giving dowry, negative attitude to the socio-economic freedom of women and negligence to education are the major reasons for relative deprivation of SC students in terms of mean academic involvement.

Role of Home Environment in Level of Academic Involvement among Female Students
Here, an attempt has been made to understand the role of different components of home environment in a holistic manner.From Table 3, it is clear that home environment poses a significant positive impact on the level of academic involvement (LAI) of female students in the study area (Table 3). in works outside is having a negative and significant impact on girls' education (r= -0.37*) because it leads to an increase of indirect burden of household works on the adolescent girls.The role of the burden of household works has been assessed in this study by measuring the time invested in household works/ day by the cohorts and it works as a limiting factor (r= -0.41**) for girls' academic involvement.Along with these, direct and indirect exposure to various aspects of domestic violence and/or abuses also play a significant negative (r= -0.58**) role on LAI of female students.Parents' support for cohorts' economic independence (r=0.19),their mobility (0.14) and preference of marriage over education (0.24) show very weak positive relation with LAI.However, the number of siblings is showing a very weak negative correlation (r= -0.11) with LAI and have no significant impact on it (Table 3).

Identification of the Dominating Components of Home Environment to Control the Level of Academic Involvement
Case-I: General Caste (GC)

Nuclear Families
In case of nuclear families of general caste, fathers' (positive) and mothers' occupation (negative) are guiding the system most powerfully in the first factor loading with 49.783% explanation of variance.It is followed by father's occupation, Parents' support for mobility and parents' support for education of cohort.Mother's level of education has the most influential role in second factor loading with 189.824% of variance explanation (Table 4).In case of joint families of GC, 60.31% of variance has been explained by the dominance of parents' support for education of the cohort followed by parents' priority of education than marriage in first factor loading.In this case however, mothers' occupation is negating the system (Table 5).Remaining 14.716% of variance has been explained by high influence of time spent by cohort in household works (Table 5).

Nuclear Families
Parents' priority of education for cohort than marriage has highest influence on students' academic involvement of SC nuclear families with 40.406% explanation of variance in the first factor loading.The cohorts directly or indirectly have perceived incidents of domestic violence or abuses as and number of siblings is negating the system in this phase.On the other hand, mother's level of education is influencing the system in second factor loading with 21.613% of variance explanation (Table 6).Parents' priority for cohort's education than marriage is strongly guiding the level of academic involvement in SC joint families with 42.292% variance explanation in first factor loading.On the other hand, the second factor loading (with 29.021% variance explanation) for this case, is supporting the dominance of mother's occupation as a determining factor for academic involvement of females (Table 7).In ST nuclear families, parents' support for education of cohort is controlling the level of academic involvement among female students in first factor loading by explaining 37.013% of variance.In this case too, mothers' occupation are highly negating the system.Second and third factor loading are positively dominated by mother's level of education and father's level of education with 17.388% and 14.960% explanation of variance respectively (Table 8).

Joint Families
Fathers' occupation controls the system for level of academic involvement among students from ST joint families but parents' support for cohorts' economic independence is highly negatively guiding the system in the first factor loading with 46.196% of variance explanation.Time spent by cohort in household work is the major governing factor in second factor loading with the explanation of 25.697% explanation of variance (Table 9).

Source: Field Survey, 2016
From the overall analysis of primary data, one can understand that caste and tribal identity based disparity are profound in the study area-in terms of not only the level of academic involvement among female students but also in terms of various dimensions of home environment in both nuclear and joint families.Factors like socio-economic status, fathers' occupation, parents' education, parents' support for education, level of empowerment at home have worked as positive catalysts in academic involvement of girls.In these cases, relatively higher educated mothers' are not engaged in any income generating works in any form.This is why, they have more time left for taking care of their children's education more than those who are engaged in various physical labour based works outside.Moreover, on behalf of the working mothers, their adolescent girl child has to take over the burden of household works mainly in nuclear families where no female replacement of the mother is available.This finding is similar to previous research (see, Bhattacharyya and Vauquline, 2013;Roy et al., 2015).For this reason, in many homes mothers' occupation bear negative influences on girls' academic involvement.Direct and indirect exposure to domestic violence and various types of abuses as well as not having a scope to discuss these problems also add to lesser engagement in educationally purposeful activities.Over prioritisation of male child over girl child and marriage over education are the major reasons that girl students from SC families lag far behind GC and ST students.

Conclusion
Considering the micro level problems that restrict female education in the study area, the research suggests that only the economic empowerment of socio-economic status will not be sufficient to improve the overall quality of the home environment.Diminishing the negative effect of the non-material (noneconomic) attributes embedded within the ageold socio-cultural norms play huge roles in determining the academic involvement of female students.Hence, these norms should be taken into considerations in policy perspectives for both macro as well as micro level to maintain a balance between the rate of enrolment and actual involvement or achievements in academic life.Home environment has a fundamental role in a student's psycho-social well-being.As home environment directly or indirectly can control the involvement in academic works, it should be treated purposefully at micro level.Systemisations of women workforce (mothers) particularly in unorganised agricultural sector is very much needed for the adolescent girls' overall development.Frequent parent-teacher meetings, adult literacy campaign and awareness generation programmes through different folk shows like Yatra, Tamasha, and dance programmes may be treated as powerful instruments for social motivation.Problems like direct or indirect exposure to domestic violence or abuses needs to be dealt with proper attention.One-stop family counselling cells may have an important role in controlling these issues.Moreover, counselling facilities should be provided through the schools to the students having problem of maladjustment with their family or have an abusive family environment to understand and remove the root cause of those problems.Along with these, a help cell should be provided at least at Gram Panchayat level where adolescent girl students would be free enough to put forward the problems faced at household level without fear.

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Map of Bankura District showing Dhekia Gram Panchayat (G.P.) of Saltora Community Development Block Methods Rigorous cohort specific field based observations have been made to fulfil the research objectives.The methods, which have been used for this study, are discussed under the following heads: (a) Study habits (b) Constant absence in school in last one academic year (c) Weekly pattern of absence in school (in last one year) (d) Status of availing private tuition (e) Presence of stagnation (f) Presence of late enrolment (g) Level of academic interaction with peers II Home Environment (HE) A. Economic Status (ES) (a) Monthly income of the family (b) Household infrastructure B. Parents' educational level (completed years of schooling) (a) Father's educational level (ELF) (b) Mother's educational level (ELM) C. Parents' Occupation (a) Father's occupation (FOCC) (b) Mother's occupation (MOCC) D. Number of Siblings (NOS) E. Average time spent by the cohort in household work (Hours./Day)(TSCHW) F. Incidence of any form of domestic violence or abuses as perceived by the cohort (IDVA) G. Parental support for cohort's education (PSE) H. Parental support for economic independence of cohort (PSEI) I. Parental support for priority of education than marriage (PSEM) J. Parental support for cohort's mobility (PSMO) K. Level of empowerment at home (LEH: Based on Adolescent Girls' Empowerment Scale (Sisodia and Singh, 2009).(a) Power and entitlements (b) Autonomy and self-reliance (c) Decision making Results and Discussion