The primary justification for investment in secondary education lies in its contribution to economic growth and poverty reduction. Most of the economic and employment growth over the past ten years in India has taken place in skilled services (information technology, financial services, telecommunications, tourism and retail) and skill-intensive manufacturing, all of which require, at a minimum, a secondary education degree. However, employer surveys (FICCI 2007) increasingly indicate that shortages of skilled workers constitute constraints to new private sector investment.

and growth in these very sectors. Further, analysis shows steadily rising rates of return to secondary and senior secondary education, reflecting that demand for knowledge and skills gained at the secondary level (fueled by economic growth) has increased faster than supply. Public investment can accelerate the response to this skills demand and overcome certain market failures which would result in underinvestment in secondary education by the private sector alone.

Secondly, the positive externalities of secondary education on health, gender equality, and living conditions are even

stronger than those of primary education, although these are difficult to quantify in economic terms. Through its impact on young people’s age at marriage, and its propensity to reduce fertility and improve birth practices and childrearing,

expanded secondary education of girls leads to significantly lower maternal and child mortality, slower population growth and improved education of children, all of which

are important GoI goals. These social benefits to secondary education are very clearly seen in the results of the National Family Health Survey III (2007).

Elementary education is of course necessary for all, but it is frequently insufficient to enable young workers to lift themselves and their families permanently out of poverty; recent economic studies have shown that secondary education is critical to breaking inter-generational transmission of poverty. Unfortunately, access to secondary education in India is highly unequal. There is a 40 percentage point gap in secondary enrollment rates between students from the highest and lowest expenditure quintile groups (70 percent versus 30 percent enrollment, respectively). In addition, there is a 20 percentage point gap between urban and rural secondary enrollment rates, and a persistent 10  percentage point gap between secondary enrollment rates of boys and girls. Enrollment of STs, SCs and Muslims is well below their share in the population at large. Public policy has an important role to play in ensuring learning opportunities for all students irrespective of their home backgrounds, through the use of public funding to alter the distribution of the costs and benefits of secondary education.1 Furthermore, to the extent that ability is not correlated with wealth, a society can gain by providing equal opportunity for equal ability, rather than equal opportunity for equal wealth

Fourthly, public investment can overcome education market failures and household misperceptions of the value

1

“Expanding Opportunities and Building Competencies for Young

People: A New Agenda for Secondary Education”, World Bank, 2005.

of secondary education, particularly among the poor.

Many poor households simply cannot afford the direct and opportunity costs of secondary education, nor can they access credit markets because of lack of collateral and other credit requirements. Other households, for socio-cultural reasons, under-value the benefits of secondary education, particularly for girls (Kingdon, 2002).

Fifthly, secondary education makes an important contribution to democratic citizenship and social cohesion, which are extremely important principles in India. Given India’s size and diversity in terms of languages, ethnicities, religion and caste, secondary education enables students from different backgrounds to learn together and provides all youth with the foundations for democratic and civic participation. This simply cannot be done adequately at the elementary level, and by higher education the vast majority of youth have already left the education system.




Sixth, there can be no major expansion or improvement of higher education in India without first improving and expanding the secondary level. Given the relatively small enrollment rates at higher education (11 percent), and higher education’s critical role in knowledge generation and promoting India’s integration with the global knowledge economy and society, there is a rationale for public investment in higher education, albeit limited. Secondary education is the basic requirement for continuation to higher education. In addition, the opportunity to attend secondary education has been proven to be a powerful incentive for students to complete elementary schooling, reinforcing achievement of Millennium Development Goals. Indeed, secondary education can be a “bridge” or a “bottleneck” between elementary and higher education; public policy has an interest in ensuring it is the former, not the latter.

Finally, India’s gross enrollment rate (GER) at the secondary level of 40 percent is far inferior to the GERs of its global competitors in East Asia (average 70 percent) and Latin

America(average82percent).Even countries such asVietnam and Bangladesh, which have lower per capita incomes than India, have higher gross enrollment rates. The relative success of these countries suggests that India is under performing at the secondary level, and has scope for significantly improving access and quality of secondary education given its current level of Secondary Education in India:  It also suggests that India needs to increase public investment in secondary education to remain globally competitive.

Source:  SECONDARY EDUCATION IN INDIA: UNIVERSALIZING OPPORTUNITY : world bank  ( This report on Secondary Education was prepared by the World Bank with the support of the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) and the Department of Economic Affairs of the Ministry of Finance, as a contribution to the Government of India’s strategy for the development of secondary and higher education. The report analyzes secondary education from the perspectives of access, equity, quality, efficiency, management and financing, and proposes options for the improvement of secondary education in all these dimensions.)