Quality and Inequality of Elementary Education in the State of West Bengal of India

Abstract

The chapter has two main objectives: i) To analyze the quality of elementary education in West Bengal in terms of the learning achievement in mathematics, reading and writing and the inequality among students across different groups. ii) To analyze the factors influencing the performance of the students in mathematics and language. Using secondary data from the Government of West Bengal's Utkarsha Abhiyan for 123980 students of class 4 across 12,912 schools it was observed that on average girls significantly outperform boys in all three subjects. Moreover, the inequality in learning outcomes is lesser for the girls than that of boys. Schools with basic infrastructural facilities have performed better. The Tobit Regression analysis indicates that various school-level and environmental factors have a significant impact on performances. Interestingly, funds per student and the gender of the teacher in primary education turned out to be insignificant. The chapter focuses on the fact that merely increasing funds does not ensure improvement in learning outcomes.