Secondary edu lagging behind, says WB study

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi: Caught between the emphasis on elementary and higher education, secondary education has suffered in the country, a World Bank report has said.

Calling secondary education a “forgotten middle”, Sam Carlson of World Bank, who prepared the report, pointed out how investment in secondary education had declined. While primary education gets the largest share of 52% of total spending on education, secondary education, which plays an important role in building up a skilled workforce, gets 30% of the spending, the report said.

Higher education gets 18% of the total spending on education. India’s gross enrolment rate (GER) at the secondary level of 52% is far inferior to the GERs of countries like Vietnam (72%), Sri Lanka (83%) and China (91%).

Carlson said the newlylaunched Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan has tremendous potential to bridge the gap in secondary education. World Bank is in the process of lending $500 million loan for RMSA. Projections, Carlson said, suggested an increase in absolute demand for secondary education between 2007-08 and 2017-18 of around 17 million students per year, with total enrolment growing from 40 to 57 million students. The report said there was a 40% point gap in secondary enrolment rates between students from the highest and lowest expenditure quintiles. It said there was a 20% point gap between urban and rural secondary enrolment rates, and a persistent 10% point gap between secondary enrolment rates of boys and girls.

Secondary enrolment also varies from state to state—22% in Bihar, 92% in Kerala, 4% in Jharkhand and 44% in Tamil Nadu. In some states like Rajasthan, UP and Madhya Pradesh, enrolment of the general population at secondary level is 80% higher than for SCs, STs and Muslims.

The report has recommended public-private partnership models including reform of the grant-in-aid system, public classroom and school construction in rural areas, hiring of more teachers and introduction of double-shift teaching. To raise demand for higher education, the Bank said number and quality of class eight students should be increased, there should be a provision of financial and in-kind aid for disadvantaged students. Emphasis has also been put on strengthening secondary education teacher training colleges, peer-based development of teachers, teacher performance standards and increased community monitoring of student learning.

The report, while recommending India to become part of international benchmarking like Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, carried out a test on the basis of published test items in schools of Rajasthan and Orissa. It was found that students’average scores placed them below 43 of the 51 countries tested, just above South Africa and Ghana. But, top 5% of students performed far higher, on average, than most of their peers around the world.

NUMBER CRUNCHING
Only 30% of the total expenditure on education is spent on secondary educationn
India’s gross enrolment rate (GER) at the secondary level of 52% is far inferior to the GERs of countries like Vietnam (72%), Sri Lanka (83%) and China (91%)