Primary school attendance in India in 2006

21 million children of primary school age in India were out of school in 2006, more than in any other country. Compared to 2000, the number of children out of school has fallen by 9 million, but the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education by 2015 can only be met if the increase in primary school attendance accelerates in the coming years.

According to data from a nationally representative Demographic and Health Survey (DHS), the primary school net attendance rate (NAR) in India was 83 percent in 2006. (In India, the DHS is referred to as National Family Health Survey or NFHS.) In other words, more than 8 out of 10 children of primary school age (6-10 years in India) were attending primary school. In 2000, the primary school net attendance rate was 76 percent. Although the attendance rate has increased, there are persistent disparities in the education system of India. The bar graph below displays the primary school NAR by sex, area of residence, and household wealth. 85 percent of all boys and 81 percent of all girls are in school and the country is therefore close to gender parity. On the other hand, there is a larger gap between urban and rural areas. The urban primary NAR is 89 percent and the rural NAR is 82 percent.

Primary school net attendance rate (NAR), India 2006

Data source: India Demographic and Health Survey 2005-06

Disaggregation by household wealth reveals even greater disparities. 96 percent of all primary-school-age children from the richest household quintile are in school. With declining household wealth, the share of children in school also falls. In the poorest household quintile, the primary NAR is only 69 percent, almost one third below the NAR in the richest households. As a consequence, children from the poorest households make up almost half of all children out of school in India. An earlier article on this site contains additional data on children out of school in India.

Note on NAR calculation

The official report for the India DHS lists the primary NAR as 71.9 percent (IIPS and Macro International 2007a, Table 2.8, page 31). The primary NAR cited above, 83.3 percent, is higher because of a different calculation method. The DHS report uses the traditional definition of the primary school net attendance rate, which only considers attendance in primary school and ignores attendance at higher levels of education.

• Primary NAR (traditional definition) = Number of children of primary school age in primary school / Total number of children of primary school age

A joint report by UNESCO and UNICEF, Children out of school: Measuring exclusion from primary education (UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2005), introduced a revised method to calculate the primary NAR. In contrast to the traditional calculation method, school attendance at primary or higher levels of education is considered.

• Primary NAR (revised definition) = Number of children of primary school age in primary school or higher / Total number of children of primary school age

In countries like India, where a relatively large number of children of primary school age are already in secondary school, the traditional calculation method underestimates the true level of participation in the education system and overestimates the number of children out of school. During an assessment of progress toward universal primary education, the primary NAR published in the final DHS report would lead to the wrong conclusion that almost 30 percent of all children of primary school age are not in school in India. In fact, fewer than 17 percent of all children of primary school age are not in school.

References

• International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), and Macro International. 2007a. National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) 2005-06, India: Volume 1. Mumbai: IIPS. (Download in PDF format, 7.9 MB)
• International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), and Macro International. 2007b. National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) 2005-06, India: Volume II. Mumbai: IIPS. (Download in PDF format, 4.1 MB)
• UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2005. Children out of school: Measuring exclusion from primary education. Montreal: UIS. (Download in PDF format, 4.9 MB)

Related articles

• Primary school attendance by state in India
• India has 21 million children out of school
• Educational attainment in India, 1950-2000
• Primary school completion in India, 1950-2000
• Education disparity in South Asia
• 115 million children out of school

External links

• Demographic and Health Survey (DHS), India
• National Family Health Survey (NFHS), India
• UN Millennium Development Goals

Friedrich Huebler, 19 November 2007 (edited 12 October 2008), Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2007/11/primary-school-attendance-in-india-in.html

India has 21 million children out of school

India is the country with the largest number of children out of school. India has more children of school age than China and at the same time relatively low attendance rates, in spite of recent increases in primary and secondary school participation.

Newly released data from a Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) show that the primary school attendance rate has increased by more than one percentage point annually since the beginning of the decade. In 2000, 76 percent of all children of primary school age (6-10 years) were in school. By 2006, this value had increased to 83 percent (see Table 1). The attendance rate of girls increased by 9 percent over the 2000-2006 period and the attendance rate of boys by 6 percent. School attendance rates also grew in urban and rural areas, and across all household wealth quintiles. However, close to 17 percent of all children of primary school age continue to be out of school.

Table 1: Children of primary school age in school (percent), India 2000 and 2006

	2000	2006	Change 2000 to 2006
Male	79.2	85.2	5.9
Female	72.3	81.4	9.1
Urban	82.5	88.5	5.9
Rural	73.8	81.5	7.7
Poorest 20%	66.1	69.4	3.2
Second 20%	69.2	81.2	12.1
Middle 20%	78.8	87.5	8.7
Fourth 20%	82.1	92.2	10.1
Richest 20%	89.1	95.7	6.6
Total	75.9	83.3	7.5

Data sources: India Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 2000, India DHS 2005-06.

As a result of the increase in primary school attendance, the number of children out of school fell by almost one third from 30 million in 2000 to 21 million in 2006 (see Table 2). This pattern could be observed for boys and girls, and for residents of urban and rural areas. However, disaggregation by household wealth reveals that one group of children did not follow the nationwide trend. Among the poorest 20 percent of all households, the number of children out of school grew from 9.4 million in 2000 to 9.8 million in 2006. Although the primary school net attendance rate among children from the poorest households grew by 3 percentage points from 2000 to 2006 (see Table 1), this increase was not strong enough to keep pace with population growth in the poorest segment of the Indian population.

Table 2: Children of primary school age out of school (million), India 2000 and 2006

	2000	2006	Change 2000 to 2006
Male	13.0	9.5	-3.5
Female	16.4	11.2	-5.2
Urban	5.0	3.7	-1.3
Rural	24.5	17.0	-7.5
Poorest 20%	9.4	9.8	0.5
Second 20%	8.5	5.3	-3.2
Middle 20%	5.2	3.1	-2.1
Fourth 20%	4.3	1.7	-2.6
Richest 20%	2.0	0.8	-1.3
Total	29.5	20.7	-8.7

Data sources: India MICS 2000, India DHS 2005-06.

A comparison of the composition of the total population of primary school age and the population of children out of school shows which group of children are disproportionately more likely to miss out on education. Figure 1 shows the composition of the Indian population aged 6 to 10 years. 52 percent of all children in this age group are boys and 48 percent are girls. About one quarter of all children of primary school age live in urban areas and the remaining three quarters in rural areas.

Wealth quintiles are constructed by ranking the entire population of India, regardless of age, according to household wealth and dividing them into five equally sized groups with 20 percent each of the total population. As Figure 1 shows, households from poorer quintiles are more likely to have children than households from richer quintiles. Overall, 26 percent of all children between 6 and 10 years live in the bottom quintile and a further 23 percent in the second quintile.

Figure 1: Population of primary school age by sex, area of residence, and wealth quintile, India 2006

Data source: India Demographic and Health Survey 2005-06.

Figure 2: Children of primary school age out of school by sex, area of residence, and wealth quintile, India 2006

Data source: India Demographic and Health Survey 2005-06.

Figure 2 shows the composition of the group of children aged 6 to 10 years that are out of school. Although girls only account for 48 percent of the total number of children in this age group, they make up 54 percent of the children out of school. Rural children are disproportionately more likely to be out of school than urban children. Most strikingly, children from the poorest quintile make up almost half of all children out of school. 48 percent - 10 million of the 21 million children out of school - live in the poorest quintile. 74 percent of all children out of school live in the two poorest quintiles.

These numbers emphasize the close link between poverty and school attendance in India. School attendance rates have increased among the poorest households between 2000 and 2006 but the increase was not large enough to keep pace with population growth. Unless India places more emphasis on school attendance among the poor, the country will miss the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education by 2015.

Related articles

• Primary school attendance by state in India
• 115 million children out of school
• Primary school attendance in India in 2006
• Educational attainment in India, 1950-2000
• Primary school completion in India, 1950-2000
• Education disparity in South Asia

External links

• Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS)
• Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS)
• UN Millennium Development Goals

Friedrich Huebler, 13 November 2007 (edited 12 October 2008), Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2007/11/india-has-21-million-children-out-of.html

Global Education Digest 2007

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics has released the Global Education Digest 2007: Comparing Education Statistics Across the World. The Global Education Digest is an annual publication that presents the latest statistics on primary, secondary and tertiary education. The 2007 edition contains statistics from more than 200 countries up to the year 2005.

The focus of this year's Global Education Digest is the financing of education. The report draws attention to the fact that public spending on education is concentrated in developed countries. The United States alone accounts for more than one quarter of the global education budget. Countries like France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom have education budgets that exceed the spending on education in all of Sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to 15 percent of the world's school-age population but combined spending on education by national governments in the region amounts to only 2.4 percent of the global education budget.

The world is at the midpoint between the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals and the 2015 target date, but without increased spending on education in Sub-Saharan Africa and other regions the goal of universal primary education is unlikely to be met.

External links

• Announcement of the Global Education Digest 2007 by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics
• Download the Global Education Digest 2007 (PDF, 3.7 MB)
• UN Millennium Development Goals

Related articles

• UNESCO releases data from 2006 education survey
• Global Education Digest 2008
• Global Education Digest 2006
• Global Education Digest 2005

Friedrich Huebler, 22 October 2007 (edited 28 December 2008), Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2007/10/global-education-digest-2007.html

Secondary school attendance in Nepal, 1996-2006

Over the past decade, the primary school net attendance rate (NAR) in Nepal increased from 65 percent in 1996 to 84 percent in 2006. At the secondary level of education, school attendance rates have also grown over the same period according to data from three Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), shown in the graph and table below.

In 1996, only one in five children of secondary school age attended secondary school. By 2006, the secondary school NAR had doubled from 21 percent to 42 percent. The biggest relative increase was observed among the poorest households. In the poorest household quintile, the secondary school NAR more than tripled from 8 percent in 1996 to 28 percent in 2006. Most of this increase occurred over the period 2001 to 2006, when attendance rates in the richest households grew only marginally.

Secondary school net attendance rate (%), Nepal 1996-2006

Data source: Nepal Demographic and Health Surveys, 1996, 2001, 2006.

The attendance rates of boys and girls grew by more than 20 percent between 1996 and 2006. The absolute gap between the two groups stayed the same, around 8 percent. The relative gap, measured by the gender parity index, the ratio of female to male attendance rate, improved from 0.67 to 0.83. The latest value is below the gender parity index in primary education, 0.95, but it brings the country closer to the Millennium Development Goal of gender parity in primary and secondary education.

Rural children managed to reduce the gap with urban children. In 1996, the secondary school NAR in urban areas was twice as high as in rural areas (41 versus 20 percent) but by 2006 the NAR in rural areas had doubled to 40 percent, while the NAR in urban areas grew to 52 percent.

Secondary school net attendance rate (%), Nepal 1996-2006

	1996	2001	2006	Change 1996 to 2006
Total	21.3	30.9	41.7	20.4
Male	25.4	35.1	45.7	20.3
Female	17.1	26.6	37.8	20.8
Urban	40.9	50.6	52.4	11.5
Rural	19.5	28.7	40.1	20.5
Poorest 20%	8.4	14.6	27.8	19.4
Second 20%	10.9	20.5	33.3	22.4
Middle 20%	16.7	26.4	40.6	23.9
Fourth 20%	25.6	36.5	50.8	25.2
Richest 20%	43.3	57.0	59.5	16.1

Data source: Nepal Demographic and Health Surveys, 1996, 2001, 2006.

Related articles

• Primary school attendance in Nepal, 1996-2006
• Primary and secondary school attendance in Nepal
• Nepal: trends in primary education, 1980-2004
• Caste, ethnicity, and school attendance in Nepal
• Education disparity in South Asia
• Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2007

External links

• United Nations Millennium Development Goals
• Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS)

Friedrich Huebler, 26 September 2007 (edited 12 October 2008), Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2007/09/secondary-school-attendance-in-nepal.html

Primary school attendance in Nepal, 1996-2006

In 2006, a Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) collected data on school attendance in Nepal. A comparison with data from earlier DHS surveys, conducted in 1996 and 2001, shows a steady increase in primary school attendance over the last decade. The primary school net attendance rate (NAR) - the share of children of primary school age who attend primary school - has increased by almost 10 percentage points every five years, from 65 percent in 1996 to 84 percent in 2006. If Nepal can sustain this rate of increase it will reach the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education by 2015.

The increase in attendance was accompanied by a reduction in disparities between boys and girls, residents of urban and rural areas, and children from different household wealth quintiles (see the graph and table below). Much of the increase in primary school attendance is due to higher attendance rates in rural areas, especially over the period 2001 to 2005, when attendance in urban areas grew only marginally.

Primary school net attendance rate (%), Nepal 1996-2006

Data source: Nepal Demographic and Health Surveys, 1996, 2001, 2006.

Children from the poorest 20 percent of all households saw the biggest increase in primary school attendance, from 48 percent in 1996 to 77 percent 2006. The difference in the primary NAR between children from the richest and poorest household quintiles fell by more than half over the same period, from 42 percent in 1996 to 20 percent in 2006.

Nepal also achieved a marked reduction in gender disparity over the past 10 years. In 1996, only 56 percent of all girls of primary school age attended primary school. This share grew to 82 percent by 2006. The primary NAR of boys grew from 74 percent to 86 percent over the same period. With a gender parity index (GPI) of 0.95 - the ratio of female to male NAR - Nepal has almost reached the Millennium Development Goal of gender parity in primary education.

Primary school net attendance rate (%), Nepal 1996-2006

	1996	2001	2006	Change 1996 to 2006
Total	65.1	73.5	84.1	19.0
Male	73.6	79.9	86.0	12.3
Female	56.4	66.8	82.0	25.6
Urban	84.3	89.8	90.2	5.9
Rural	63.6	72.0	83.2	19.6
Poorest 20%	48.4	59.6	76.7	28.3
Second 20%	59.7	67.4	79.8	20.1
Middle 20%	62.0	75.1	84.3	22.3
Fourth 20%	72.6	78.2	86.9	14.3
Richest 20%	90.6	94.3	96.9	6.2

Data source: Nepal Demographic and Health Surveys, 1996, 2001, 2006.

Comments on the 2006 DHS data

The authors of the final survey report from the 2006 DHS in Nepal counted children in school-based pre-primary centers as primary school students for the calculation of the primary school NAR. Children in informal, community based preschool classes were excluded from the calculation of the primary NAR. The author of this article chose the same approach.

A UNESCO country profile of Nepal prepared for the Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2007 explains that "there are significant differences in the way the school based and the community based [early childhood development centres] are running. Most of the school based centres are run by the DEO [District Education Office], and most of them are more primary schools than development centres."

The statement by UNESCO supports the treatment of children in school-based pre-primary centers in Nepal as equivalent to children in primary school for statistical purposes. In developing countries it is not uncommon to find children of primary school age in preschool but because of national differences the interpretation of the data from Nepal cannot necessarily be applied to other countries.

Related articles

• Secondary school attendance in Nepal, 1996-2006
• Primary and secondary school attendance in Nepal
• Nepal: trends in primary education, 1980-2004
• Caste, ethnicity, and school attendance in Nepal
• Education disparity in South Asia
• Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2007

External links

• United Nations Millennium Development Goals
• Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS)
• Nepal: Early childhood care and education (ECCE) programmes, UNESCO 2006 (PDF, 56 KB)
• Nepal Demographic and Health Survey 2006, final report (PDF, 4.95 MB)

Friedrich Huebler, 14 August 2007 (edited 12 October 2008), Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2007/08/primary-school-attendance-in-nepal-1996.html