Inequalities in education

In India, elementary education is fundamental right, through 86th constitutional amendment in 2002. Since then India is striving to achieve universal elementary education through Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA. The school enrolment in EAG states is lower than national average. Government of EAG states have challenge of keeping pace of educational investment with higher number of children due to high fertility, achieving 100 percent enrolment and improving quality of education. The paper looks into quantitative assessment of educational progress at various educational grades and number of pupils using alternative assumptions on enrolment and drop-out rates in different grades. Results depict the highest probability of completing primary level found in Orissa and lowest in Bihar. The highest number of droppers during the primary education is found among Bihar. It may be observed that (e1) is greater than e0 for almost all the EAG states.

Age-related cognitive decline combined with demographic changes represents a social, economic, and health-related challenge. Extending schooling and improving the quality of education can be one important policy response for reducing the incidence of poor cognitive function among seniors. This study gives a global comparison of the impact of education on cognition, using standardized cognitive measures from representative surveys of individuals aged 50+. Data are from aging surveys conducted in mid 2000s covering more than 20 countries of Asia, America, Africa, and Europe.
Using a multilevel approach to identify the influence of individual education as well as the influence of national-level education, we find a positive education-cognition relation for all countries, in spite of their very different characteristics with respect to demography, educational distribution, selection into schooling, and level of economic and social development. We also find that an increase in the national education level not only increases an individual's level of education but also has an additional positive effect on his/her cognition.
Education is significantly positively associated with cognition across all countries. Raising the level and quality of education could represent a potential mechanism for improving cognition at older ages.

This is an investigation of inequalities in secondary school completion level in Kerala, a state which is way ahead of all other Indian states in terms access to education. Since Kerala has achieved universal elementary education and is in midst of tackling of second generation issues related to schooling, this study focused on examining inequalities in completion of 10 years of school education at the right age of schooling. The analysis is based on data on educational attainment of household population available in the NFHS-III (2005-06) survey. Among the 5-17 population in the Kerala 9 percent are not in school while another 8 percent are over aged children in school. Survival analysis shows that only 70 percent of children enrolled in school are successfully completing secondary school education at the right age. Further the girls outperform boys in schooling continuity and in successful completion of secondary school education. The article brings out the educational backwardness of children belonging to socially vulnerable communities in the State. Household wealth based inequalities were unexpectedly higher with risk of not completing secondary school age at right age being 4.6 times higher for children in poorest quintile than richest quintile counterparts.

Education is meant to provide an equal opportunity for development to its pupil despite of their socio- cultural disparities. Education policy of the second most populous country with largest population of school going children believes in it as a ‘catalyst to resolve various existing socio-cultural and economic problems’. Revisit to the notion of education as a tool for equality, compels us to critically look into the system of education at first place on which we are relying to resolve the historical difference, present concerns and thus related future consequences. The present paper attempts to investigate the level of inclusion of poor (based on Wealth Index) and backward communities in elementary education among various states. The situational analysis advances with the help of multiple data sources with the aim of presenting the issue in toto. Logistic regression analysis shows that some of the factors such as wealth index, types of residence, caste do affect the educational status of disadvantaged children even in the well-to-do states. 'No interest' in studies came out to be the most common response for dropping off the school.
Key Words: Elementary Education, Wealth Index, Backward Communities

This paper searches for inequalities in scholar performance in the end of basic education (8th grade) among gender, socioeconomic status, geographic region, in Brazilian public schools with more than 20 students. The assumption is that there are attributes inside and outside school that can increase the difference of performance in standardized evaluations. In this paper INEP’s data from Prova Brasil 2009, which is a census review for basic education students from public schools, were used. In our analyses we intent to know which factor is of greatest significance for differentiating performance. To do so, we adopted a multilevel model and a decomposition of variable’s effect.

This paper is divided into three sections; first section is concerned with establishing whether there is disparity in access to higher education or not. In this section we find that SC/ST among the social groups and Muslims among the religious groups are most backward; the second section we see whether this disparity exist even when we consider the enrolment ratio based on eligibility. This section is concerned with the debate on whether disparity across social or religious groups is because of disparities in school education or not. Some paper authors envisages that the existing disparity is not significant if one considers enrolment in higher education with respect to the eligible students. Our findings do not support this version. First reservation regarding this is how we define eligibility. Here eligibility has been defined in two ways; those enrolled in higher secondary and are in the age group 16-18 and those having education level of higher secondary in the age group 18-22. The result confirms disparity in access to higher education irrespective of the definition we consider. The third section is concerned with whether the existing disparity is because of economic factor ie deprivation is the main reason behind the inequality in access to higher education or this is because of institutional factors and m

This paper explore the differentials of various schooling attendance pattern i.e. never attended, entered into school, dropout rate, repeating , left school two or more years ago and overage schooling among various social groups determined by economic condition of household in India. The wealth index has used to know the child schooling pattern differentials in various economic categories of household. The study finding suggest that the bottom 20 % (poorest) household’s children have more deprived in schooling pattern as never attended, dropout rate and overage schooling compared to middle and richest household children. The States have also a big difference in child schooling attendance pattern (Bihar has highest 39 % never attended compared to lowest for Kerala as 2 percent). The over age schooling among Scheduled Tribe children are more compared to other social class in India. The paper concludes that the various economic categories (poorest, poorer, middle, richer and richest) directly determining the schooling pattern and over age schooling in India.

This paper focuses on education as the most important human capital endowment and presents research-based evidence to examine the association between migration, religion and education from an economic and socio-demographic perspective. Since migrants’ status in the labour market operates as an essential indication of settlement and integration upon migration, this analysis examines the association through migrants’ work patterns. The field of this study is the multiethnic and multicultural context of Australia holding a wide range of ethnic and religious groups of migrants from throughout the world. According to both bivariate and multivariate findings of this analysis, educational attainment as an important human capital plays a substantial role in migrants’ work achievements. However, the economic return of education is significantly associated with migration status, religious affiliation, and ethnic backgrounds of migrants.

The expansion of primary education in India over the last decade has been phenomenal. Quality of primary education in India has been a major cause of concern. Navi Mumbai is a planned city adjacent to Mumbai - a financial capital of India. The student’s educational outcome and academic success is greatly influenced by the three factors namely type of school (public or private), class size and teachers. A sample of 20% schools was selected from 3 types (Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation, Zilha Parishad and private) of school management in Navi Mumbai. This study examines the academic achievement of 11,484 students studying in 24 primary schools (class 1 – class 7) having 281 teachers. The academic performance of students, class size, student teacher ratio and number of trained and untrained teachers was collected from primary schools in Navi Mumbai. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multiple classification analysis (MCA) were used to analyse the data. The study showed that despite better infrastructure and other facilities in private schools, the quality of education was better in public schools. Academic performance of students was significantly influenced by class size (low, medium, high), trained teachers (more, less).

This paper examines school progression in Indonesia using merged data from national socio-economic survey from 1993 to 2009 with administrative data on education finance at district level and data from national labor force survey. At the first stage, the data from socio-economic surveys are analysed using survival models revealing an overtime improvement in school progression. However, the analysis from the most recent data finds that there are many children still could not complete Nine-Year Basic Education, although it is compulsory. Drop-out rate at both primary and junior secondary school remains an issue, but low transition rate is even more challenging. Based on this finding, this study runs multilevel analyses to examine the likelihood of a child to continue their education to the next level after completing primary or junior secondary schools. It reveals that inequality in school continuation does vary across districts. Gender and household wealth effects are found to vary across districts. Education budget allocated by district government together with gender development at district level to some extent are positively associated with school continuation, but the findings provide strong evidence that socio-economic of households is the most important factor for children to progress their education.