by Vivek Kaul
This basically means around 300 hours of teaching in a year, which means less than one hour a day (actually 49.3 minutes, to be very precise).iv And we have made a very important assumption here—that the student is present in school on all days that the teacher is—which, of course, is not true.
As Drèze and Sen write in An Uncertain Glory:
With a teacher absenteeism rate of around 20 per cent, and a pupil absenteeism rate of about 33 per cent, the combined probability of a child and [emphasis original] his or her teacher being present on an average day is only just above 50 per cent. This brings down the number of teaching days effectively to one hundred days or so.
The research carried out by PROBE was published in 1999. It has been some years since then. The question to ask here is: How have things evolved since then? In 2004, a study titled Teacher Absence in India: A Snapshot was published by the World Bank.
The findings of this study were along similar lines of the PROBE study. In a typical government-run primary school, one in four teachers was absent on a daily basis. Furthermore, only 45 per cent of the teachers were engaged in teaching even when they were in class.67
As the study further points out:68
Within India, the absence rate ranged from 15 per cent in Maharashtra to 42 per cent in Jharkhand [as can be seen from Figure 3.1]. Absence rates are generally higher in low-income states: doubling per capita income is associated with a 7.2 percentage point lower predicted absence. The rates of teaching activity among the teachers who are present are lower in higher-absence states and schools. In some states, only 20 to 25 per cent of the teachers were engaged in teaching at the time of the visit.
Figure 3.1: State-wise comparison of teacher absence in public schools (in %).
Source: Teacher Absence in India: A Snapshot, World Bank.
The study also found that: “Absence rates are considerably higher than could be accounted for by non-official teaching duties, such as staffing polling stations during elections or conducting immunisation campaigns, which are sometimes cited as important causes of absence. Based on the responses of each school’s head teacher or primary respondent, official non-teaching duties account for only about 4 per cent of [the] total absences.”
How do things look more recently? In 2011, a study titled ‘Inside Primary Schools—A Study of Teaching and Learning in Rural India’ was published by the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) Centre. The study was carried out in five states—Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand and Rajasthan. Researchers in this study made three visits to schools. They found that, on an average across three visits, 78 per cent of all teachers were marked present. This basically meant that 22 per cent were absent. Also, it needs to be pointed out here that teacher attendance improved across all states except Jharkhand between visit 1 and visit 3.69
The World Bank study published in 2004 had found 24.8 per cent of the teachers to be absent. Given this, there hasn’t been any significant improvement in teacher absenteeism. In fact, surveys indicate that teacher absenteeism still varies anywhere between 15-25 per cent.70
Along with teacher absenteeism, the absenteeism of students continues to remain a real problem. The ASER study cited above sampled around 900 schools and found that only 65 per cent of students in Classes I-V were in school during any given visit carried out by the researchers. This meant that 35 per cent of the students were absent. This finding is in line with the 33 per cent student absenteeism rate cited by Drèze and Sen in An Uncertain Glory.
Furthermore, there are multiple reasons for student absenteeism. First and foremost, students are absent because teachers are absent. As the World Bank study found out: “A 10 per cent increase in teacher absence is associated with a 1.8 per cent lower student attendance.”71
The lack of a school at a reasonable distance from the home plays a part in how regular a student is when it comes to going to school. Furthermore, in the PROBE study, many parents offered illness as a reason as to why their child or children skipped school. This referred to either the student being ill or someone within the family being ill. If the father is ill, the son may have to help in the field. If the mother is ill, the daughter may have to take care of the home.72
In fact, a more recent study carried out by ASER in 2014 shows similar results. On the day that the researchers from ASER visited the sample schools, 71.4 per cent of the students in primary schools were present. Furthermore, 71.1 per cent of the students enrolled in upper primary schools were present. In 2013, these figures had respectively been 70.7 per cent and 71.8 per cent.73
In fact, like in the case with every average figure, the attendance varies dramatically across the country. In states like Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, the attendance was low and in the 50-60 per cent range. In other states like Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab and Tamil Nadu, the attendance levels were higher and in the range of 80-90 per cent.74
And how did things look as far as the attendance of teachers was concerned? For primary schools, in 2014, 85 per cent of the appointed teachers were present in school on the day of the visit, as compared to 89.1 per cent in 2009. The 2014 figure for teacher attendance in upper primary schools was 85.8 per cent, as against 88.6 per cent in 2009.75
A student’s attendance, or rather, the lack of it, has a direct impact on how much the student learns. The ASER 2011 study found that the children who were present in school more often than not did better than those who weren’t.76
In fact, another factor that matters is how interested the student is in attending school. But, given the poor standard of teaching, this interest cannot really be high. As Drèze and Sen write: “The quality of teaching in Indian schools seems to be exceptionally low over a wide range of institutions. Teaching methods are quite often dominated by mindless rote learning.”77
This, clearly, has an impact on the learning of the students. In fact, the reading abilities and the ability to do simple mathematics of Indian students have been falling over the years. This is clearly brought out by the Annual Status of Education Reports published by the ASER Centre. In fact, such evidence has now been available for almost a decade. It is clear that in rural India, the reading ability of students as well as the ability to do simple mathematics have come down over the years.
In 2006, 48.1 per cent of the students studying in Standard III could read at least a Standard I level text. This had dropped to 40.3 per cent by 2014. In 2012, it had dropped to a low of 38.8 per cent. Furthermore, the numbers get even more interesting if we look at the government schools and the private schools separately. Take a look at Figure 3.2.
Figure 3.2: Percentage of children in Std. III who can read at least a Std. I level text (by school type).
Source: Trends over Time (2006-2014): A Supplement to ASER 2014, January 2015.
When it comes to government schools, the percentage of Standard III students who can read at least Standard I text has come down dramatically over the years. In 2006, it was at 45.8 per cent. Since then, it has fallen to 31.8 per cent. In the case of private schools, the figure has more or less remained stagnant.
And this is a trend that remains constant across different learning outcomes (see Figure 3.3).
Figure 3.3: Percentage of children in Std. V who can read at least a Std. III level text (by school type).
Source: Trends over Time (2006-2014): A Supplement to ASER 2014, January 2015.
The overall reading ability has come down over the years, and it has come down dramatically in government schools. A similar trend is observed when the basic numeracy abilities of children were measured. In fact, things have gone pretty bad when it comes to the ability of students to do basic mathematics (see Figures 3.4(a) and 3.4(b)).
The mathematical abilities of students have fallen quite drastically over the years. In 2007, 42.4 per cent of Standard III children could do subtraction. By 2014, the number had fallen to 25.4 per cent. In
2007, 42.5 per cent of Standard V students could do division. By 2014, the number had fallen to 26.1 per cent. The figures in government schools were even worse.
Figure 3.4(a): Percentage of children in Std. III who can do at least subtraction.
Source: Trends over Time (2006-2014): A Supplement to ASER 2014, January 2015.
Figure 3.4(b): Percentage of children in Std. V who can do division.
Source: Trends over Time (2006-2014): A Supplement to ASER 2014, January 2015.
Furthermore, these are average, all-India numbers. There are some states where the numbers are absolutely abysmal. Take the case of Jharkhand. Only 12.1 per cent of Standard III students in government schools could do at least subtraction in 2014, against the national average of 17.3 per cent. Only 17.6 per cent of Standard V students could do division, against the national average of 20.7 per cent in government schools.78
This abysmal state of Indian education was visible to all when India participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), carried out by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development, held in 2009. In this test, the country finished second last, above only Kyrgyzstan. This was the first and last time that India participated in PISA.
To cut a long story short, the state of primary education in India is in a huge mess. It all started with the government paying attention to higher education in the quest to produce manpower for the public sector enterprises. While they did manage to produce manpower for the public sector enterprises, primary education got grossly neglected in the process.
The irony is that school enrolment is at an all-time high. As per the Annual Status of Education Report (2014), the percentage of students out of school in the age group of 6 to fourteen is at 3.3 per cent. The number was the same in 2013. Education statistics released by the Ministry of Human Resource Development in 2014 put the enrolment ratio in primary school (Standards I to V) in India at 99 per cent. The enrolment ratio in upper primary school (Standards VI to VIII) is at 93 per cent. This falls dramatically to 73.6 per cent in secondary school (Standards IX and X) and 48.1 per cent in senior secondary school (Standards XI and XII).
Furthermore, the facilities available at rural schools have also marginally improved. Around three-fourths of the schools had access to drinking water in 2014, up from 72.7 per cent in 2010. In fact, in states like Bihar, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, drinking water was available in more than 85 per cent of the schools.79
Also, 65.2 per cent of the rural schools had usable toilets in 2014, up from 47.2 per cent in 2010. The percentage of schools that had usable girls’ toilets was at 55.7 per cent in 2014, up from 32.9 per cent in 2010. 78.1 per cent of the schools had library books in 2014, up from 62.6 per cent in 2010. As far as computers go, 19.6 per cent of the rural schools had computers in 2014, against 15.8 per cent in 2010. Kerala led in this parameter, with 89.8 per cent of the schools having computers. The corresponding figures for Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra were at 81.3 per cent, 62.4 per cent and 46.3 per cent, respectively.80
The point being that things are looking much better for rural schools on the facilities front than was the case in the past.
One reason often offered for the bad state of Indian school education is that teachers aren’t paid well. This isn’t really true. The teacher salaries in OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries, which include some of the most developed countries in the world, were around 1.2 times the GDP per capita between 2000 and 2009. In India, the ratio of teacher salary to GDP per capita was around five before the Sixth Pay Commission came into effect.81
And this ratio shot up even further after the Sixth Pay Commission came into effect in 2009, with retrospective effect from 2006. Every ten years, the central government sets up a Pay Commission which, among other things, also revises the salaries of central government employees upwards.
This has an impact on the salaries of those working for the state governments as well. The state governments are forced to raise salaries by implementing the recommendations of the Central Pay Commission with some modifications.
As the Seventh Pay Commission Report, released in November 2015, points out in relation to the Sixth Pay Commission: “A significant number of States follow the recommendations of the Central Pay Commission. Equally, there is a significant plurality of States that design their own pay awards based on the recommendations of their own State Pay Commissions, which of course do consider the recommendations of the Central Pay Commission.”
This essentially means that the salaries of those employed by the state governments, which include teachers in government schools, go up. Take the case of Uttar Pradesh, the most populated state in India. The starting salary of a regular teacher in a government primary school was Rs. 8,370 until December 2008. In early 2009, this increased to Rs. 17,996, a jump of 115 per cent. When it came to experienced teachers, their salary jumped to Rs. 22,955, an increase of 76 per cent. This implied a mean increase of 92 per cent, an almost doubling of salary at a single go.82
As mentioned earlier, this increase was retrospective and came into backdated effect from 2006. Hence, the average salary of a primary school teacher in Uttar Pradesh was Rs. 20,476 per month, or Rs. 2,45,712 per year. The UP state GDP per capita during the same year (i.e., 2009) was Rs. 14,834. Hence, the salary of the average teacher was 16.6 times the average per capita income in the state of Uttar Pradesh.83
As the Sixth Pay Commission Report had said: “Teachers are critical as they are an investment for the future of the country. To ensure that the best available talent enters the Government in these fields and continues to feel motivated to give their best after joining, the Commission has consciously recommended higher entry-level pay scales for constables, teachers and nurses.”
What the Pay Commission did not take into account was where the money for higher salaries was going to come from. Many states got around this by recruiting more contract teachers at a fraction of the cost they would have had to pay if they had recruited permanent teachers.
Before the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations had come into force, the teachers in private schools in Uttar Pradesh made around Rs. 3,000 per month, or around one-fourth of what the government school teachers were making. All across India, the ratio was around 3:1, i.e., government school teachers earned three times as much as private school teachers.84
This ratio got worse after the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations came into effect. The starting salary of a regular government primary school teacher jumped to Rs. 17,996, whereas the salary of a primary school teacher of a private school increased to around only Rs. 3,500 per month, implying a ratio of more than 5:1.85
The contract teachers work on lower salaries than the regular government teachers. At the same time, they have less training and lower formal qualifications. Nevertheless, there is some evidence that suggests that they do no worse than regular teachers in imparting basic skills like reading and writing.86
The point is that paying government school teachers higher than their private counterparts and higher than the average Indian citizen hasn’t led to any improvement in the quality of teaching. In fact, it costs the government a lot of money, which one estimate puts at Rs. 50,000 crore, or 0.6 per cent of the GDP, per year. The cost per student in a government school in the medianv state in 2011-2012 was Rs. 14,615. In a private school, the median cost was Rs. 5,961. This is equivalent to a median difference of Rs. 7,906 per student.87
As Lant Pritchett and Yamini Aiyar write in their 2014 research paper titled ‘Value Subtraction in Public Sector Production: Accounting Versus Economic Cost of Primary Schooling in India’:88
Hence in the typical Indian state, educating a student in a government school costs more than twice as much than in a private school, a gap of Rs. 7,906. Just these accounting cost gaps, aggregated state by state, suggest an annual excess of public over private cost of children enrolled in government schools of Rs. 50,000 crores
, or 0.6 per cent of the GDP. But... that staggering estimate does not account for the observed learning differentials between [the] public and [the] private [schools].
As we have seen earlier in the chapter, the learning outcomes in government schools have fallen dramatically over the years, while those in private schools have kind of remained stagnant in the case of language skills but have fallen in the case of the ability to do basic mathematics. Nevertheless, the latter haven’t fallen as fast as they have fallen in government schools.
The government school teachers are making much more money than they were in the past. Having said this, the teachers seem to have missed out on the bonanza when it comes to the recommendations of the Seventh Pay Commission.
As the Seventh Pay Commission report points out: “The Commission notes that the teachers were provided higher than normal replacement pay grades, in the form of an upgrade, by the Sixth Central Pay Commission. This has given rise to relativity issues vis-à-vis other cadres. Therefore, considering the job profile, entry-level qualifications and method of recruitment, any further upgradation in pay scales is not justified.”
The question still remains as to why the overall quality of education has particularly fallen since 2010. The answer lies in the Right to Education Act, which was passed by Parliament in August 2009 and which came into force from April 1, 2010.
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Perfect is the enemy of good.
– OLD ENGLISH APHORISM
Economists often talk about the Law of Unintended Consequences. Typically, the way a government works when it encounters a major problem is to pass a law around it. But the law normally doesn’t have the impact it is expected to have and, more often than not, ends up having effects which were not expected in the first place.
