| Abstract: | This paper provides an overview of school education in India.First, it places India's educational achievements in internationalperspective, particularly against countries with which it isnow increasingly compared, especially China. Second, the paperexamines schooling access in terms of enrolment and school attendancerates, and schooling quality in terms of literacy rates, learningachievement levels, school resources, and teacher inputs. Third,the paper investigates the role of private schooling in India,examining the extent of growth of private schooling and surveyingevidence on the relative effectiveness and unit costs of privateand public schools. Last, the paper discusses some major publiceducation initiatives. The concluding section suggests a futureresearch agenda and appeals for rigorous evaluation of the impactsand costs of the numerous existing educational interventions,in order to learn about their relative cost-effectiveness forevidence-based policy-making. |
