In this paper authors use non-experimental data from government schools in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, two of the largest Indian states, to present average school outcomes by contract status of teachers. The authors find that after controlling for teacher characteristics and school fixed effects, contract teachers are associated with higher effort than civil service teachers with permanent tenures. Higher teacher effort is associated with better student performance after controlling for other school inputs and student characteristics. Given that salaries earned by contract teachers are one fourth or less of civil service teachers, contract teachers may be a more cost-effective resource. However, contracts 'as they are' appear weak. Not only do contract teachers have fairly low average effort in absolute terms, but those who have been on the job for at least one full tenure have lower effort than others who are in the first contract period.
In this paper, we use non‐experimental data from government schools in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, two of the largest Indian states, to present average school outcomes by contract status of teachers. We find that contract teachers are associated with higher effort than civil service teachers with permanent tenures, before as well as after controlling for school fixed effects. And higher teacher effort is associated with better student performance after controlling for other school inputs and student characteristics. Given that salaries earned by contract teachers are one‐fourth or less of civil service teachers, contract teachers may be a more cost‐effective resource. However, contracts 'as they are' appear weak. Not only do contract teachers have fairly low average effort in absolute terms, but those who have been on the job for at least one full tenure have lower effort than others who are in the first contract period.
This paper uses survey data from representative samples of government and private schools in two states of India, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, to explore systematic differences between the two school types. The authors find that private school students have higher test scores than government school students. However, in both private and government schools the overall quality is low and learning gains from one grade to the next are small. There is large variation in the quality of both school types; and observed school and teacher characteristics are weakly correlated with learning outcomes. There is considerable sorting among students, and those from higher socio-economic strata select into private schools. Private schools have lower pupil-teacher ratios and seven to eight times' lower teacher salaries but do not differ systematically in infrastructure and teacher effort from government schools. Most of the variation in teacher effort is within schools and is weakly correlated with observed teacher characteristics such as education, training, and experience. After controlling for observed student and school characteristics, the private school advantage over government schools in test scores varies by state, school type and grade. Private unrecognized schools do better than private recognized schools. Given the large salary differential, private schools would clearly be more cost effective even in the case of no absolute difference in test scores.
India has set out ambitious goals for itself in the health sector in its Tenth Five Year Plan (2002-07). It is also a signatory to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Attainment of these goals which are time-bound will require a massive scaling up of investment in health, especially in public primary health care. We argue for a 'Health for All' initiative on the part of the government akin to the 'Education for All' scheme which was launched nation-wide in 2001. The large amount of resources required for scaling up public investment in primary health need not be the constraint it is purported to be. We discuss several options that are available to the government for generating the necessary funds. Among the options that can generate resources domestically are reform of the government's subsidies regime including implementing life-line tariffs, ear-marking taxes and disinvestment of loss-making public sector units. Health for All can also be financed by raising more resources via external assistance. Official development assistance to India at present is rather low given India's per capita income and the scale of its needs in human development terms. The scale of official development aid to India should increase several folds and committed use of funds should be made by the government in health and other priority sectors. With the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Indian Constitution which created a third tier of government comprising of elected local bodies at the village and town ward levels, a decentralized system of service delivery will eventually become a reality in India and needs to be a part of any debate on the means and modes of improving human development outcomes in India. The current system of planning and allocation of funds at the sub-national level however needs to be over-hauled if fiscal decentralization is also to become a reality.
An attempt is made in this paper to analyze the state of primary education in India. Using various data-sources and secondary research, we provide a description of the salient features of the public education system in India for primary schools (grades one through five) as well as educational outcomes, both in terms of quantity and quality. Literacy rates, especially in the younger age groups, for both boys and girls are on an upward trend. This is an extremely positive outcome as historically India has suffered from endemic illiteracy. However, rising literacy rates have been accompanied by unevenness of achievements: across Indian states and across various socioeconomic groups. States in the Western and Southern zones of India outperform those in the East and Center. Moreover, the densely populated states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan continue to lag behind the rest of India. Literacy rates for girls, rural residents, and especially members of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes also lag behind those for boys, urban residents and the upper castes. In terms of physical access to schools, more than ninety percent of the Indian population now has a primary school located within one kilometer of their place of residence. However, many schools have only one or two classrooms and most lack running water and toilets. These features are not conducive to a learning environment. The really critical aspect of the Indian public education system is its low quality. Even in educationally advanced states, an unacceptably low proportion of children who complete all grades of primary school have functional literacy. There is a lot of 'waste' in the school system as evidenced by the large percentage of children who drop-out before completing primary schooling. Such inefficiency is compounded by teacher apathy, teacher absenteeism, very high pupil-teacher ratios and inadequate teacher training. Public expenditure on education in India has been rising over time. After the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) which was launched in 1994, the federal government launched the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) in 2001 with the goal to universalize primary education (grades one to five) by 2007 and elementary education (grades one to eight) by 2010. Unlike the DPEP, SSA is funded entirely by domestic resources and provides the states with a strong initiative backed by funding to tackle illiteracy among the young members of their population. Another policy that has been very successful in increasing enrollments, attendance and retention of students in primary school is that of the provision of mid-day meals. There are lessons to be learnt from the diverse experiences of Indian states in terms of their achievements in literacy. While in Kerala, strong social intermediation by the government has proved successful, in Himachal Pradesh, social capital and community participation seem to have led to similar success.
India's achievements in the field of health have been less than satisfactory and the burden of disease among the Indian population remains high. Infant and child mortality and morbidity and maternal mortality and morbidity affect millions of children and women. Infectious diseases such as malaria and especially TB are reemerging as epidemics, and there is the growing specter of HIV/AIDS. Many of these illnesses and deaths can be prevented and/or treated cost-effectively with primary health care services provided by the public health system. An extensive primary health care infrastructure provided by the government exists in India. Yet, it is inadequate in terms of coverage of the population, especially in rural areas, and grossly underutilized because of the dismal quality of health care provided. In most public health centers which provide primary health care services, drugs and equipments are missing or in short supply, there is shortage of staff and the system is characterized by endemic absenteeism on the part of medical personnel due to lack of oversight and control. As a result most people in India, even the poor, choose expensive health care services provided by the largely unregulated private sector. Not only do the poor face the double burden of poverty and ill-health, the financial burden of ill health can push even the non-poor into poverty. On the other hand, population health is instrumental for both poverty reduction and for economic growth, two important developmental goals. India spends less than 1% of its GDP on public health, which is grossly inadequate. Public investment in health, and in particular in primary health care, needs to be much higher to achieve health targets, to reduce poverty and to raise the rate of economic growth. Moreover, the health system needs to be reformed to ensure efficient and effective delivery of good quality health services.
India's landmark Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (2009) guarantees education to all children aged 6-14 years. The Act mandates specific student-teacher ratios and emphasizes teacher quality. Writing this into legislation took seven years, but the seven years since has proven that ensuring effective teachers are recruited and placed in all schools in a time-bound manner is considerably more challenging. This report takes a detailed look at the complexity of the teacher management landscape in elementary and secondary schools in nine Indian states. On a daily basis, the administrative machinery of these states has to manage between 19,000 to nearly a million teachers in different types of schools and employment contracts, and cope with recruiting thousands more and distributing them equitably across schools. This report examines the following issues: official requirements for becoming a schoolteacher in India; policies and processes for teacher recruitment, deployment and transfers; salaries and benefits of teachers; professional growth of teachers; and grievance redress mechanisms for teachers. For the first time in India, this report compares and contrasts stated policy with actual practice in teacher management in the country, using a combination of primary and secondary data. In so doing, the report reveals the hidden challenges and the nature of problems faced by administrators in attempting to build an effective teacher workforce which serves the needs of all of India's 200 million school children. The report examines states with varying characteristics, thus generating knowledge and evidence likely to be of interest to policy makers and practitioners in a wide range of contexts.
