Education Challenges - Quality and Inclusion

India's education sector is indeed in a bad state. There are serious problems with respect to access to education itself, and quality education is simply not available. 89% of kids of primary school-going age of the richest 20 per cent of the population attend school both in the rural and urban areas, while that proportion drops to 79% for kids in the poorest fifth of the population in rural areas and 78% in urban areas. But, attendance drops sharply when it comes to secondary school and becomes worse at the higher secondary level. Also, the difference between the richest and the poorest in enrolment widens sharply from the primary section to the secondary and higher educational levels.

The gulf between the poor and the rich widens as we go up the ladder. Only 6% of young people from the bottom 20 per cent of the population attend educational levels above higher secondary in urban India, while 31% among the richest 20 per cent of the population attend secondary school. The middle class is also substantially disadvantaged when it comes to higher education. The situation is substantially worse in rural India. What happens, therefore is that the richer children have much better opportunities for higher education, essential for getting good jobs in the cities. These are also the children who travel abroad for jobs and for higher education. The poorer children must then work in the informal sector at low wages and remain vulnerable.