Education in India

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Education in India

• Discussant comments
• by
• Geeta Gandhi Kingdon
• University of Oxford
• Dec. 2006

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India in international comparisons
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Access to education

• Access to primary
• registered great improvements from 1990s
• some mystery about official enrolment figures
• ASER (2006) shows 93.4 of kids are enrolled
• 12.4 million kids are out of school
• However, current attendance/ retention/
  completion low
• Access to middle secondary school
• rising, but far from universal

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Factors behind higher access

• Reductions in poverty
• with positive education budget share risen
• NSS Maharashtra 87 (30) 93 (56) 2000 (62)
• Policy interventions
• DPEP (T training books school construction)
• Operation Blackboard
• Para teacher / EGS schemes
• Mid day meal schemes
• Increase in private schooling

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Quality of education

• Primary school
• ASER learning achievement (outcome)
• High teacher absenteeism (input) 26 absent
• Secondary school
• UP high school achievement
• TIMSS module applied to India
• Flight to private schools suggests quality
  premium
• Kingdon (1996 2005) PROBE (1999) Muralidharan
  (2006)

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Impediments to access/quality

• Low return to basic education implications for
  growth
• Abysmally resourced schools
• real T salaries consistently risen (5 pa)
• Share of non-salary expenses has fallen
• Lack of accountability/efficiency in public
  schools
• shirking teachers cannot be disciplined
• teacher unions strong politically powerful
• no incentives built into teacher pay
  (Pritchett/Murgai Duflo/Hanna)
• Teacher pay schedule is inefficient (Kingdon
  Teal, 2006)
• Can policy do anything about the above
  impediments?

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Shape of education-earnings relationship

• Has potentially important implications for the
  poverty reducing role of education, and for
  economic growth
• whether the positive relationship is linear,
  concave or convex.
• Caveats
• RR to primary includes return to post-primary
• Does not take the cost stream into account
• Not including social benefits of education

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Education-earnings relationship, by state and
gender (contd.)
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