The 1990s saw remarkable improvement in education indicators in India. Between 1992/93 and 1998/99, net enrollment of the 6-to-10 age group increased from 68 percent to 82 percent across the nation. In rural areas, girls’ net enrollment jumped from 55 percent to 76 percent, and boys from 72 percent to 84 percent. Despite these achievements, some 39 million children or about 21 percent of the 6-to-14 age group were still out of school and Grade 5 completion rate was under 78 percent nationwide in 1999-2000. Wide-ranging disparities were prevalent across states and districts. For example, the net primary enrollment ratios ranged from 63 percent in Bihar to 98 percent in Kerala. Inequity across scheduled castes and scheduled tribes was pronounced.
- The World Bank has a long history of supporting India’s District Primary Education Program, which has been operating in 273 districts in 17 states since the mid-1990s.
- The Elementary Education project known as Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) is a centrally-sponsored scheme operating in a large federal system in which the states are responsible for providing and financing elementary education.
- The project takes a sector-wide approach wherein the development partners agree on their financial contributions to the government’s program and rely on the government’s own rules and procedures for implementing the program.
- Among other activities, the government’s program financed innovative state-led initiatives to get children into school, salaries for new teachers, free textbooks for girls and disadvantaged students, provision of teaching and learning materials, setting up local-level institutions to provide support services to schools and teachers, and monitoring and evaluation.
The number of Indian children out of school went down from 25 million in 2003 to about 7 million in 2006 (exceeding the target), thus steadily moving towards universal enrollment (about 185 million children were enrolled at the elementary level in 2006).
Highlights:
- With regard to equity, the gender gap has reduced. At the elementary level, the share of girls enrolled (as a percentage of total enrollment) is 46 percent compared to a baseline of 44 percent (which is close to the proportion of girls in this age group in the population).
- The social gap has also narrowed with an increase in Scheduled Caste enrollment at primary level from 18.9 percent in 2002 to 21.3 percent in 2006 which reflects parity with their share in the overall population (16.2 percent). Similarly the Scheduled Tribe enrollment has also increased from 10.3 percent in 2002 to 11 percent in 2006.
- More children are now moving from the primary cycle to the upper primary cycle, with transition rates from Grade 5 to Grade 6 increasing from a baseline of 75 percent (2003) to 83 percent in 2006.
- The total cost of the program was US$3.5 billion of which three development partners contributed $1 billion: IDA's contribution was US$500 million, the UK’s (Department for International Development) was US$346 million, and the European Commission’s was US$200 million. The government of India contributed $1.58 billion, with a matching contribution of $875 million from the states.
- IDA significantly increased the overall resource envelope, which has played an important role in the scaling-up of the program.
- Furthermore, by supporting the strengthening of the feedback system already being used by the government of Inida for continuous review of program design and implementation, the central government, states and districts have been able to make better decisions regarding the allocation of financial resources and adjustment of policy and practices.
- IDA has also provided technical support for undertaking studies and an impact evaluation of various aspects of the program – learning assessment, teacher accountability and contracting, public expenditure tracking – which are being fed into improving the design of the program.
- Furthermore, dialogue has now led to greater attention being paid to education quality issues.
Owing to delays in collecting data, any change in learning levels over the baseline cannot yet be measured, but various reports indicate that improving quality is a challenge that still needs to be tackled. IDA and the other development partners are now working with the government of India to develop the second phase of SSA, with the main objective being to improve the quality of education at the primary level as well as providing access to the most disadvantaged.
India - Elementary Education Project (Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan) - (2004-07)
Project documents
RSS