Income loss impact: Private school enrollment declines in rural India as students shift to govt schools

Allowing only 50 percent students per classroom, mandatory thermal screening, staggered lunch breaks, alternate seating arrangements and avoiding routine guest visits are among the guidelines announced by the DDMA for the reopening of schools. (Image: ANI)

The Covid-19 and its impact on income and jobs seem to have changed the schooling pattern in rural India. The enrollment in private schools from such areas has declined quite visibly and most of the students have either moved to government schools or dropped out, says data.

According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), the marque school education report by education non-profit Pratham, the private school enrollment has dropped from 32.5 percent in 2018 to 24.4 percent in 2021.

And proportion of students studying in government schools in the 6-14 age group has climbed up from 64.3 percent in 2018 to 70.3 percent in 2021. And those not enrolled in schools have inched up from 2.5 percent in 2018 to 4.6 percent in 2021, indicative of a near doubling of the dropout rate during the same time period.

The shift was observed across several states in north, south and west India, across gender and across school levels, showed the survey that collected data from 581 districts of India and maps the impact of the pandemic on rural students and their learning outcome. The number students in government schools has gone up by 13.2 percentage points in Uttar Pradesh, 11.9 percentage points in Kerala, 9.6 percentage points in Tamil Nadu and 9.2 percentage points in Maharashtra.

At least 72 percent of the male students studying in Class-1 and Class-2 are now in government schools up from 57.9 percent in 2018. Similarly, at least 79.2 percent girls studying in Class-6 to Class-8 are now in government schools, as against 73.3 percent in 2018.

The shift in schooling as shown in the survey proves the point that the income loss and job loss, reverse migration, and inability to pay private school fee in a pandemic year has pushed parents in rural India to largely take their kids to government schools, where education is free. The pandemic’s impact on economy and subsequent income loss of millions of people looks like a key factor in choice of schooling.

The trends is more visible for male students who are proportionately more in private schools than girls earlier due to socio-economic reasons. ASER 2021 also strengthens the argument that the majority of the budget private schools are struggling to survive in rural India as against high end private schools in cities who charge more fees and have better infrastructure.

“The national increase in government school enrollment is driven by large northern states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana and…states like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. In contrast, in many north-eastern states, government school enrolment has fallen during this period, and the proportion of children not enrolled in school has increased,” the ASER report underlined.

The World Bank last month has highlighted the problem of learning poverty due to the pandemic across countries and how loss of education is negatively impacting human capital and “threatening this generation”.

“Hundreds of millions of children have lost at least a full year of schooling due to COVID-19. This pandemic has brought about the largest loss of human capital in living memory and the worst education crisis in a century,” World Bank Group President David Malpass has said in a note in October.