Having steadily raised primary enrollment rates since independence, India today has the world's second largest education system after China, with 67 million children aged 6-10 attending primary school. But another 32 million primary school age children are not in school, and the result is that many of the huge returns to primary education are lost, the World Bank says in a new study, Primary Education in India, released today. According to the report, India's average level of educational attainment has not yet reached the critical threshold where benefits are greatest and high economic growth rates are sustainable. Without action, at the current rate of growth in primary schooling in some of India's largest states, educational attainment will not reach an average of four to five years of primary education until the middle of the next century.
Primary education leads to better family health, lower fertility, and slower population growth.
It helps workers to take advantage of technological change, raising their productivity and earnings. The report presents new data on primary education in India and focuses on how to provide primary schooling or its equivalent for all 105 million children of primary school age in India and how to improve the quality of the more than 500,000 mostly public schools serving the rural poor. But reaching full enrollment of the 6-10 age group remains a major challenge in all states of India and a distant goal in some. Enrollment by girls increased by 20 percent between 1986 and 1993. About 65 percent of the 6-10 age group attend school regularly.