Identifying Inter-state Disparities and Socio-economic Linkages

Abstract

India aspires to become a knowledge hub, transforming millions across the world into educated global citizens. For this transformation, the entire education system in the country needs to be sound and robust. To achieve this goal at the national level, it is desirable to first strengthen the education system at state level. Education in India is in the concurrent list; the union government has some responsibilities while the states have autonomy. Therefore, the responsibility for financing secondary education is a shared responsibility between the union and state governments. The patterns of school management of secondary education are complex and vary considerably not only across states but even within states, between lower and higher secondary levels of education. Given the well-known regional disparities in India in various fields—social, economic, health, education, science, and technology—the comparative performance of individual states has become an important area of research. Despite the fact that secondary education forms an integral part of the development of the entire education system, very few studies have been conducted so far that have taken up the issues on the growth of secondary education particularly at the state level and in identifying the inter-state disparities in India. To fill up the gap, this chapter discusses the issues related to access, participation, and quality of lower and higher secondary education (Ninth–Twelfth standards) in 20 major states in India and examines the existing level of inter-state disparities. State-level analysis of secondary education is required especially if states need to progress in a balanced way. Moreover, the results from state comparisons can throw up successful experiments and examples which can be replicated or adapted by other states. While, the first section of this chapter discusses the state profile in terms of economic, social well-being, health, education, income and employment, and demographic performances, the next section presents facts on the status of secondary education in states. The third section discusses state financing patterns and the fourth section deals with disparities existing among and within states. This part of the chapter highlights various capabilities and inefficiencies of states in terms of socio-economic and demographic profiles and has tried to relate these with educational attainments in selected states. The fifth section tries to evaluate the inter-relationship between attainment of school education attainment and socio-economic outcomes at both macro and micro levels. The major findings are summarized in the last section of the chapter.