EPDC Spotlight on India

India, classified as a lower middle income country by the Work Bank in 2014, is the second most populous country in the world with 122.5 million children of primary school age and 167 million children of secondary school age. According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), in 2011 there were 3.9 million teachers in primary schools and 1.9 million teachers in lower secondary schools. In India, the official primary school entrance age is 6 and education system is structured as 5-4 and 3-year cycles respectively for primary, lower secondary and upper secondary school. Students sit for certificate examinations at the end of grades 8, 10, and 12.

EPDC’s National Country Profile for India shows where India stands in comparison to other low and middle income countries in access to education and in education quality. Compared to other countries, India ranks at the 61 percentile in access, measured as the primary school net enrollment rate, and at the 29 percentile in learning, measured by youth literacy. This trend of relatively higher enrollment rate compared to poorer learning outcomes in India have played out in debates around passage of the 2010 Right to Education Act, requiring all children aged 6 to 14 to attend school for free, while giving less attention to the issue of education quality.

Behind the steady growth of enrollment rate is the fact that disparity of education still exists across India. According to EPDC extractions of the most recent DHS dataset, the completion rate of primary school ranges from 56.3 in Jharkhand to 129.5 in Madhya Pradesh. Additionally, regardless of disparity in sub-national areas, EPDC Projections for India estimate that the primary completion rate will remain below 90% in 2025, suggesting India faces a challenge in ensuring that all children finish primary education, not that they simply have access to it. 

Figure 1 Primary Completion Rate by Sub-national Areas   

Learning Outcome

As mentioned previously, there has been a large debate in India over the quality of schooling, as the country makes moves toward achieving universal enrollment. One “watchdog” organization which has provided commentary in this debate is Pratham, which commissions the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER). Based on data of sub-national areas from the 2012 ASER, figure 2 explores the relationship between attendance rates[1] of primary education and the percentage of pupils below lowest benchmark in reading and math assessment. Our analysis indicates that although the attendance rate is negatively related to poor performance of both reading (r=-0.52) and math assessments (r=-0.46), the correlation is not as strong as expected. In addition, even in states with the same attendance rates, there might be a huge disparity in learning outcomes across states. For example in both Manipura and Madhya Pradesh, attendance rates are 59%, although students differ in their assessment competencies. Compared to only 2.3 percentage of students in Manipura, 13.2 percent of primary students in Madhya Pradesh scored below the lowest benchmark in the reading assessment. Thus, this analysis implies that reasons other than low attendance, such as infrastructure and quality of teachers, need to be further analyzed to explain the gap in learning outcomes across India.

Figure 2 Attendance rates and pupils below the lowest performance benchmark in assessment, by States