The interventions are aimed at addressing the education crisis in Rajasthan, which recorded an overall literacy rate of 67%–less than Cameroon, Egypt and Ghana–and the country’s lowest female literacy rate (52.66%), according to Census 2011. Rajasthan’s female literacy rate is worse than the average for the Arab world and “fragile and conflict-affected” countries, according to World Bank data.
 
India’s seventh most populated state (68.5 million people), with 24% of its population between the ages of six and 14, Rajasthan also has many children out of school (5%), according to government data.
 

 
As the first part of this series observed, literacy rates and learning outcomes are some of the lowest in the BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) states. By 2020, India will have the world’s largest working-age population–869 million–but an IndiaSpend analysis of these four states–with 43.6%  of India’s school-age population between the age of five and 14–revealed that India is unprepared to educate and train its young population.
 
Rajasthan’s overall literacy rate improved 6.6 percentage points over 10 years to 2011, data show, against an all-India improvement of 9.2 percentage points to 74.04% from 64.8%. But these improvements hide some of India’s sharpest declines in learning levels, particularly in rural government schools.
 
As learning levels decline, so does government school enrolment
 
Even though the state’s pupil teacher ratio at the primary level, from grade I to V (17), upper primary level, from grade V to VIII (10), and the classroom teacher ratio (21) at the elementary school level (grade I to VIII) is better than the Indian average, learning outcomes have not improved.
 
Reading and arithmetic levels of students between standards II and V have declined across government and private schools in rural Rajasthan, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2014.
 
In government schools, the percentage of children in grade II “who can read at least letters”  reduced from 80.5% in 2010 to 56.2% in 2014. In private schools, the percentage reduced from 93.8% in 2010 to 81.5% in 2014.
 
The percentage of children in Rajasthan in grade V, who can “read at least words” declined from 51% in 2007 to 27% in 2014 in government schools, while reading levels in private schools declined from 78% to 64% over the same period, according to ASER data.
 

Source: ASER Trends over Time Report (2006-14)
 
Rural government schools have witnessed a continuous decline in enrolment, matched partly by an increase in private school enrolment. As many as 42% of children between six and 14 years were enrolled in private schools in 2014, against 25% in 2006; enrolment in government schools declined from 63.6% in 2006 to 52.2% in 2014, according to the ASER – Trends Over Time Report.
 
The average attendance in grade I in public and private schools was 65.9% based on classroom attendance registers seen by ASER volunteers, according to an ASER study from 2010. Regular teacher attendance was 72.55%, calculated based on the two days the ASER team visited schools.
 
A drop in learning levels could indicate that little has changed between 2010 and 2014, when ASER conducted its most recent survey. (The ASER 2016 survey results are set to be released on January 18, 2016.)
 
At the same time, well-designed interventions can boost learning, with an innovative teaching system in six Rajasthan districts recording average score increases–irrespective of gender and social background–of 45% in Hindi, 26% in English and 44% in math, as IndiaSpend reported in October 2016.
 
India’s highest proportion of women without schooling , many out-of-school children
 
In 2013-14, at the elementary level, there were 5% out-of-school children in Rajasthan, according to the 2015 Digital Gender Atlas for Advancing Girls’ Education: 18% of those were children who have never been to school, while 37% were dropouts. More girls (7%) than boys (3%) were out of school.
 
Parents’ education impacts school education, according to this 2001 paper published in the Review of Development Economics, with higher parental education improving school enrolment. Rajasthan recorded the highest percentage of mothers across Indian states (69.7%) with no schooling, according to ASER 2014.
 
Besides parents’ education, another factor that could affect attendance and retention at government schools is a well-functioning mid-day meal programme. Continued exposure to mid-day meals contributed to an increase in test scores, according to this 2016 study. Reading scores improved by 18% for children exposed for five years to mid-day meals, in comparison to children who had been exposed to mid-day meals for less than a year. The arithmetic test scores witnessed an improvement of 9%.
 
The proportion of government schools serving midday meals in Rajasthan on the day of visit of the ASER team in 2014 declined from 94.8% in 2010 to 82.7% in 2014, despite the availability of infrastructure (such as a kitchen) increasing from 83.8% in 2010 to 89.8% in 2014, according to the ASER 2014 report.
 
Schools are also less accessible for students in Rajasthan. In 2013-14, Rajasthan was ranked 31 among 35 states and union territories for elementary schools accessible by all-weather roads, according to data published by the Digital Gender Atlas. Only 76.5% of elementary schools were accessible by all-weather roads, compared to the all-India average of 89%, the data show.
 
Of six million teaching positions in government schools nationwide, about 900,000 elementary school teaching positions and 100,000 in secondary school—put together, a million—are vacant, as IndiaSpend reported in December 2016, according to an answer given in the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament). About 13.2% of all elementary teaching positions–nearly 37,500–in government schools in Rajasthan are vacant.  
 
Series concluded. You can read the first part here, the second part here, the third part here and the fourth part here.
 
(Balani is a freelance writer based in Mumbai, with an interest in development issues.)
 
Courtesy: India Spend

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Overall, India’s literacy rate has increased 8.66 percentage points to 74.04%, between 2001 and 2011, according to Census data, but wide variations exists across states.
 
The crisis in education is especially apparent in the four BIMARU states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh (MP), Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh (UP)–with 445.1  million of India’s 1.2 billion population and some of the lowest literacy rates in the country, according to Census 2011. Bihar had a literacy rate of 61.8%, Rajasthan of 67.1%, UP of 67.7% and MP a rate of 70.6% in 2011, lower than the all India average of 74%. Kerala has a literacy rate of 94%, the highest in the country.
 
School outcomes are also lower in the four BIMARU states.
 
In 2014-15, fewer students moved from grade V to grade VI in UP, with a transition rate of 79.1%, when compared to Goa, with a transition rate of almost 100% in 2014-15, according to data from the Unified District Information System for Education.
 
In MP, as few as 34.1% of children in grade V could read a grade II text in 2014, compared to 75.2% in the case of Himachal Pradesh, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2014. Similarly, in Rajasthan, 45.9% of children in grade V could ‘at least’ subtract, compared to 87.4% in Mizoram.
 
Currently, only 2.5% of school age children between the ages of five and 14 live in the four states–Kerala, Mizoram, Tripura and Goa–with the highest literacy in India, compared to 43.6% in the four BIMARU states, according to Census 2011. Any reform in education in the BIMARU states would have the greatest impact for India.
 
Over the next century, 60% of the population increase in India would come from the four states of MP, Bihar, UP and Rajasthan, while only 22% would come from the more developed states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra, according to a 2003 study published by The Economic and Political Weekly.
 
UP and Bihar will have India’s youngest populations over the next 10 years, as IndiaSpend reported in September 2016, together accounting for 31% of Indians between five and 14 years.
 
The productivity of India’s young population would depend on how these states improve health, education and employment opportunities, according to this 2013 study published in Asia and Pacific Policy Studies.
 
Variations across states in India exist not only in literacy and enrolment, but also in factors that might impact future enrolment and learning.
 
For instance, life expectancy at birth, one of the factors found to affect literacy in India, according to this 2005 World Bank study, varies across states.
 
For Maharashtra, the state with a literacy rate of 82.3% in 2011, the projected life expectancy at birth for 2011-16 was 70.4 years, based on this report by the Population Reference Bureau. In comparison, MP, with a lower literacy rate of 70.6%, also had a lower projected life expectancy at birth of 61.5 years for 2011-16.
 

Source: Census 2011, Population Reference Bureau
 
School enrolment is affected by a number of factors including parent’s education, wealth of a household, midday meals, infrastructure and more.
 
Still, the BIMARU states spend less on education than their more literate counterparts. For instance, MP spends Rs 11,927 per student, while Tamil Nadu spends Rs 16,914 per student, the Economic and Political Weekly reported in September 2016. The per student spending, at Rs 5,298 , in Bihar is even lower.
 

Source: Census 2011, Economic and Political Weekly
 
Another important factor, parent’s education, impacts school education, according to this 2001 paper published in the Review of Development Economics.
 
As many as 99.1% mothers in Kerala–the state with the highest literacy–received schooling, compared to 30.3% mothers in Rajasthan in 2014, according to the ASER – Trends Over Time report.
 

Source: Census 2011, Annual Status of Education Report (Trends Over Time)
 
Further, factors such as wealth have a greater effect on enrolment in poorer states.
 
Overall, in India, children from rich families are more likely to be enrolled in school than children from poor families, but this gap is greater in UP and Bihar than it is in Kerala, according to a 2001 study by Deon Filmer and Lant Pritchett, published in the journal Demography.
 
This is the first of a five-part IndiaSpend series that looks at progress in education in the states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh.
 
Next: Bihar Short Of 76,906 Teachers; Spends Lowest Per Primary School Student
 
(Balani is a freelance writer based in Mumbai, with an interest in development issues.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

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