Social Inequalities and Secondary Educational Attainment in India: An Inter-State Analysis Charu Jain and Narayan Prasad *The views expressed in the paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the affiliated organizations.
Authors Bibliographical Note and Contact Details Charu Jain is an Associate Fellow at National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi. Her areas of research interest include socio-economic studies, gender andeducational studies, developmental changes and consumer studies. She has extensively worked in the area of large scale consumer studies, industrial surveys,housing studies, agriculture and macro-economic policy issues. Her current research focuses on educational issues, handloom sector and agricultural outlook. She has also contributed few research papers and articles in reputed national journals and has also presented papers in international conferences. Her doctorate degree is in the area of education sector, particularly looking at the quality issues of secondary education in India. Official Address:- Dr. Charu Jain Associate Fellow National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) 11 Indraprastha Estate, Parisila Bhawan, New Delhi-110002, India Emails: charujain13dec@gmail.com Narayan Prasad is presently Director, Research Unit and Professor of Economics in School of Social Sciences, IGNOU. Prior to joining IGNOU, he has worked in several reputed organizations like Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices (MRTP) Commission, Association of Indian Universities (AIU) etc. He was awarded post-doctoral fellowship by UGC and visited France under the scheme Indo-French Cultural Exchange Program. He has delivered lectures on Vedanta at various places including New York, Washington and Los Angeles in USA. He has completed three research projects and wrote three books which have been published by reputed publishers like SAGE publications and Springer Publications. Rece ntly, he has completed another major research project entitled ―Assessment of Human Well- being in India‖ financially sponsored by ICSSR. He has contributed 25 research papers and three review articles to the reputed National and International journals. His areas of research interest are: Human Well-Being, Human Development, Spiritual Economics and Philosophical Foundation of Economics. Official Address:- Dr. (Prof.) Narayan Prasad Professor of Economics Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) Discipline of Economics, School of Social Science (SOSS) Academic Block F, Maidan Garhi, New Delhi- 110068, India Email: nps20@rediffmail.com
Social Inequalities and Secondary Educational Attainment in India: An Inter-State Analysis Charu Jain and Narayan Prasad Abstract: Given the fact that the patterns of management of secondary education in India are complex and vary considerably across and within states on various socio-economic fronts, this paper presents comparative analysis of individual states in terms of school educational attainments; identifying social inequalities at different stages; ranking states on development and performance indicators; and measuring their inter-relationship with other socio-economic outcomes. While, Gini-coefficients are computed for measuring inequalities in educational attainment, the de velopment and performance indices have been constructed using UNDP‘s methodology and plotted on 2-dimensional scale to measure inter-state disparities. For developing socio-economic indices, PCA technique has been adopted and linear regressions are used to measure inter-linkages. Findings reveal striking variations across and within states on school educational attainments by gender, social groups, religion and school types. The ranking of states by SEDI and SEPI clearly categorize them into four zones showing which states are doing well off in secondary education and which sates need further efforts. Results further indicate inter-relationship between education and socio-economic outcomes with impacts being stronger for secondary education. Hence, states need to re-design their education policies looking at their capabilities/inefficiencies in order to reap maximum benefits to grow in a balanced way. Keywords: Secondary Education, Social Inequality, Principal Component Analysis, Gini Coefficient, Linear Regression, Educational Outcomes I. Introduction India aspires to become a world knowledge hub with hopes to transform millions of young people across the world into educated global citizens. Education is essential for economic growth, health benefits, gender equality, poverty reduction and overall sustainable development of the nation. Ensuring equality in education can further accelerate the achievement of these goals. For this, the entire education system in the country has to become sound and robust by achieving excellence. Education in India is in the concurrent list with some responsibilities lying with the union and the states having autonomy for others. Therefore, the responsibility for the provision and financing of education is a shared responsibility between union and state governments. After significant improvements in primary school education achieved by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), it is the right time to address the secondary education system across the country. To achieve equality at national level, it is desirable to strengthen the education system at state level first. The secondary education act as one of the strongest link between primary and higher education in India and
provides human capital base for the country, despite this fact, it is noticed that the patterns of management of secondary education are complex and vary considerably not only across states but even within states widely on various socio-economic fronts. Given the regional disparities in India; the comparative performance of individual states in terms of school educational attainments; identifying gaps; development and performance indicators of educational services; and their relationship with socio-economic outcomes has become an important area of research. But mere identifying gaps are not enough, it is equally important to study the progress made by states over the period of time due to the fact that huge investments are involved in this sector. Despite this fact that secondary education forms an integral part of the development of entire education system, very few studies have been conducted that discusses the issues on growth of secondary education particularly at state level in India. The state level analysis for secondary education is required especially if, states needs to progress in a balanced way by re-looking into the investments states have made in the field of education. At the same time it is equally important to identify states which are performing well in which sector of education and lacking in which areas. It is not necessary that states which are performing well on economic or social fronts are equally performing well at educational fronts. The reason being that it is quite possible that the infrastructural development is helping in improving the quality of education services in some states, while for others; it could be the economic factors, governmental policy efficiencies or quality of human capital living there. Hence, it is really important to understand the efficiencies and capabilities of each state and analyzing how it is affecting in rendering the quality services of education. In the light of this discussion, an attempt has been made through this paper to look at the issues related to existing social inequalities in school education in major states in India with special reference to secondary education due to the fact that it forms an integral part of the development of entire education system. The paper also presents the state ranking in terms of development and performance indicators for secondary education, thereby highlighting the inter-state disparities at two time intervals to study the progress. In addition to this, it will also find the performance of states on various other socio-economic fronts and linking it with school educational outcomes at state level. It is expected that the results from state comparisons can throw up successful experiments which can be replicated by other states and can provide useful suggestions in improving the secondary school education system in India, while considering the social, economic and demographic factors of each state separately. The paper is organized in six sections: while section I and II gives introduction and brief literature review on the subject, the objectives and methodology are discussed in
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