Why students opt out of government schools?
private schools to start with, learning outcomes improved between 2011 and 2014, once other factors were accounted for.
States with better-functioning government schools have more elite — that is, more expensive — private schools because there is no market here for the “low-fee” budget private schools that have been sprouting across the country, Gandhi’s study said.
This explains why in poorer states, such as Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Orissa, about 70 per cent to 85 per cent of children studying in private unaided schools pay less than Rs 500 per month as school fees. Up to 80 per cent of private schools are “low” fee schools when benchmarked against per capita and daily wagers’ incomes, the data show.
In 2016, for the first time in 10 years, private-school enrolment did not increase in rural areas — it fell from 30.8 per cent in 2014 to 30.5 per cent in 2016, according to the ASER 2016 report. But this has not stemmed the growth of private schools nationwide.
Between 2010-11 and 2015-16, the number of private schools grew 35 per cent, while the number of government schools grew one per cent. Section 6 of the Right to Education Act 2009 legally obligates states to create more government schools.
The migration out of government schools has left many unviable, with high per-pupil expenditure, and low value-for-money from public education expenditure. About 24,000 government schools across Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh have closed, according to the study.
India’s government teachers earn more than not just their counterparts in private schools but also in other countries, Gandhi’s analysis shows.
Despite being paid at least four times the salaries of teachers in China (in terms of multiples of their respective per capita incomes), the performance of Indian teachers judged in terms of their students’ learning levels, has been poor in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test in 2009, with India ranking 73rd and China ranking 2nd, among 74 countries.
Up to 80 per cent of India’s public expenditure on education is spent on teachers — salaries, training and learning material, according to a six-state report. Teacher salaries of teachers in Uttar Pradesh are four to five times India’s per capita gross domestic product (GDP) and more than 15 times the state’s, according to a 2013 analysis by Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze. This is much higher than the salaries paid to teachers in OECD countries and India’s neighbours.
“This suggests the need to link future teacher salary increases to the degree of teachers’ acceptance of greater accountability, rather than across-the board increases irrespective of performance or accountability,” said Gandhi. The private education sector offers salaries based on market factors of demand and supply, said Gandhi, and given that there is a 10.5 per cent graduate unemployment rate in India, jobless graduates are willing to settle for low salaries in private schools.
In 2015-16, central government spending on school and higher education was less than other BRICS countries — India spent three per cent of its GDP on education, compared to Russia (3.8 per cent), China (4.2 per cent), Brazil (5.2 per cent), and South Africa (6.9 per cent).