Private
Costs of Public Education : A Preliminary Survey of
Pune City
-
Dr. Dhanmanjiri Sathe
Prof. and Head Dept. of Economics
University of Pune
Abstract
:
Is ‘ free’ education really free, was the question we
were interested in investigating. More precisely, the
purpose of this survey was to find the additional costs
of education which the economically disadvantaged parents
have to bear, over and above the fees. To that end,
100 families from slum areas in Pune were selected.
It was found that only 9 per cent of the families have
no expenses over and above the fees. More than 70 per
cent of the children have to spend on books and accessories
as these are not made available free by the government.
Almost 50 per cent of the families were sending their
children for tuitions. The average expense on tuitions
was around 16 per cent of the average monthly expense
per head. There was no gender bias observed in sending
a child for tuitions. We suggest that the government
should intervene and make these additional costs zero.
Introduction
There is a rare consensus amongst the economists about
the who should bear the burden of the costs of school
education. School education is accepted to be a ‘merit
good’ and therefore, it is expected that all children
should consume it. India’s Constitution has taken a
very clear position on this issue and the article 45
of the directive principles of state policy states that
the state should provide free and complusory education
to all children up to the age of 14 by 1960. Moreover,
it is also a part of the received wisdom that all the
children must have school education because it helps
them and it also helps the society to have all its members
as literate. The work of Amartya Sen and others since
the early 1990s has elaborated the concept of Human
Development based on human capability approach (Sen,
1985, 2000). This approach gives high importance to
education as attainment of education leads to increase
in well being of the people because it influences social
change and increases the economic output. Thus, the
importance of school education is well accepted and
there is also a remarkable degree of unanimity about
the who should bear the costs of school education .
This is the reason there is a very high presence of
the state in this field in most of the economies. In
all the advanced economies, while a small percentage
of children from wealthier families do go to private
schools, most of the children go to schools which are
run by the government.
In
India the goal of free, universal school education has
not been attained in the last fifty years. While enrollment
has improved to a certain extent, much needs to be achieved.
More over, there has been a proliferation of some new
problems. There are questions regarding the quality
of education as quantity of education has expanded.
Is ‘free’ education really that free? Are the children
studying in a proper atmosphere? These are some of the
questions which are being asked. In this preliminary
survey, we have made an attempt to focus on some of
the issues affecting the education of the children in
urban areas.
In
India free education is available to certain sections
of the children. There are basically three types of
schools and Maharashtra also follows the same pattern.
They are – first category, the government schools i.e.
schools which are run by the local government and no
fees are charged to the pupils. In common parlance they
are known as the corporation/ municipality/panchayat
schools (because they run them). The second category
is the government-aided schools where government pays
for the salaries and other expenses, but the running/control
is with some other organization usually an educational
trust. Fees are charged to the students but they are
very, very low- usually just a token payment. The third
category is the private schools where the government
does not take up any financial responsibility. As a
result the fees
charged to the students are high.
Usually
the children from poorer backgrounds go to the first
or second type of schools. In this study we are interested
in finding out if there are any ‘other costs’ involved
in educating a child. That is, even though the school
fees are zero or negligible, are there any over and
above expenses involved in sending a child to a school?
If yes, then what and how much are the other expenses
involved in sending a child to school for a poor family?
These were the issues we were interested in because
if this amount turns out to be substantial then the
‘free’ school education is after all not that ‘free’.
More over a high amount could also act as a disincentive
in sending a child to the school. It also follows from
this that, steps would have to be taken to reduce this
burden on the families so that school education becomes
really free.
I.
Nature of the Sample-
To this end, we surveyed 100 families from the slum
areas in Pune. The areas selected were Lohiya Nagar(20),
Janata Vasahat(21), Ramwadi(17), Sanjay Park(12), Yeravada(18),Jay
Bhavani Nagar(2), Kishkinda Nagar(10) (figures in bracket
give the number of families). It was a purposive sample,
wherein these slums more or less represented all the
areas of the city. The survey was more in the nature
of a pilot study where the households were selected
randomly. Almost 70 per cent were settled before 1990
and almost 75 per cent were authorized settlements.
80 per cent of the people had Marathi as their mother
tongue. 82 per cent gave ‘Hindu’ as their religion and
15 per cent were Muslims. The survey was conducted in
the March 2005 and the respondents were the mothers
of the children.
Out
of the 100 families surveyed, we got 246 children who
fell in the age group 5 to 17 years ( i.e. children
belonged to standards 1st to 12th ). Out of these 229
(i.e. 93 per cent) did go to school; remaining 7 per
cent did not attend school. Thus our sample size for
the children became 229. Out of 229, 119 i.e. 52 per
cent were boys and 110 i.e. 48 per cent were girls.
Almost 82 per cent of the children belonged to the age
group 5 to 13 years. Remaining 8 per cent belonged to
14 to 17 years age group.
Type
of school : In Table I.1, we have put forth the distribution
of children by the type of school. Out of these around
15 per cent went to private schools, remaining 85 per
cent went to government schools or government-aided
schools. However, we have included the children from
the private schools in our sample as their families
had not so improved in financial status as to be able
to move out of a slum area (as this is not a survey
of various types of schools but of poor families and
the expenditure patterns they show with respect to school
education, we included such children also).
Table
I.1
Distribution Of Children By Type Of School
| Type
of School |
No.
of Children |
| Government
School |
87
(38%) |
| Government-aided
School |
103
(45%) |
| Private
School |
34
(15%) |
| Non-reported |
5
(2) |
| Total |
229
(100) |
II.
Background of the Family
Employment status : The 100 sample families gave us
216 adults (113 males and 103 females). 90 out of 113
males (i.e. 80 per cent approx.) reported that they
had employment for more than 25 days in a month and
41 out of 103 adult women (i.e. 40 per cent approx.)
reported that they had employment of more than 25 days
per month. 60 women did not work at all. So on the whole
the employment situation did not seem to be bad.
Educational
Status : It was found that 33 per cent of the adults
were completely illiterate. 13 percent had finished
7th std. While only 5 out of 216 adults had completed
graduation. Illiteracy was found to be higher in women
than amongst males.
The
impact of this was that for 154 out of 229 children
(i.e. 67 per cent) who went to school, it was said that
there was no one to take studies at home.
Financial
status : It is not easy to get the monthly income of
a family staying in a slum. This is because most people
do not have something close to a permanent , full time
job.
The
nature of their work being uncertain, their incomes
are also fluctuating and uncertain. Then many times
women who answer these questions do not know how much
their husband/ other male members earn. However, there
is more stability and knowledge with respect to consumption
patterns. That is, suppose for month a rickshaw wallah
earns half of his usual income ( for what ever reason),
however, his consumption will not fall by half. He will
take a loan, or dip into his meager savings but keep
his consumption almost the same. Therefore, in our questionnaire
we asked some questions with respect to the consumption
expenditure and arrived at the financial status of the
family. We asked the monthly grocery expenditure and
the daily expenditure on vegetables. From this, we could
arrive at the ‘basic monthly consumption expenditure’
for a family. This was then divided by the number of
people in the family to get the per head consumption
expenditure. In Table II.1 and II.2 we have presented
both the figures.
TABLE
II.1
Basic Monthly Consumption Expenditure of The Sample
Families
| Expenditure
Range |
No.
of Families |
| Upto
Rs 1000 |
1 |
| Rs
1001 to Rs 1500 |
5 |
| Rs
1501 to Rs 2000 |
23 |
| Rs
2001 to Rs 2500 |
22 |
| Rs
2501 to Rs 3000 |
23 |
| Rs
3001 to Rs 3500 |
9 |
| Rs
3501 to Rs 4000 |
11 |
| Above
4000 |
6 |
| Total
Families |
100 |
The
average basic monthly consumption expenditure for a
family was found to be Rs. 2618.
TABLE
II.2
Basic Monthly Per Head Consumption Expenditure Of The
Sample Families
| Expenditure
Range |
No.
of Families |
| Upto
Rs 300 |
9 |
| Rs
301 to Rs 500 |
48 |
| Rs
501 to Rs 1000 |
42 |
| Above
Rs 1000 |
1 |
| Total
Families |
100 |
The
average per capita basic monthly consumption expenditure
was found to be Rs. 507. Ownership of non-perishable
consumer goods : 78 per cent of the families had a T.V.
set, 69 families had gas connection, 51 had a bicycle
followed by 45 who had a mixer, 41 had a radio set.
Ownership of a refrigerator was found in only 6 families.
III.
Environment in which the children study
We asked the families certain questions regarding the
environment in which studying takes place. This was
to gauge their own perception regarding their ambience.
While 83 per cent of the respondents said that proper
electricity was available for studying, 52 percent of
the respondents said that the space available for studying
was adequate; 50 per cent said that the noise in the
slum area disturbed the children in studying. It was
a bit surprising to learn that with respect to space
and noise close to 50 per cent of the families were
happy. This is in contrast to the middle-class perceptions
regarding the environment in a slum area. Is it a case
of wrong middle class perceptions or the fact that the
poor have got so used to rotten conditions that they
fail to notice aspects of it or that these factors are
low on their list of priorities ? These questions needs
to be probed further.
To
learn better, school going children need exposure to
different kinds of reading materials. However, we found
that only 26 out of 100 families subscribed to a newspaper
while only 2 families subscribed to a magazine.
Response
towards knowledge of English. English language was introduced
in the government and government-aided school from standard
I five years back. Earlier to that, English used to
be introduced in the V std.. At the time of this shift,
there was a heated debate regarding this issue. While
educationists all over the world agree that education
in the mother-tongue is the best for the child, from
the point of employability it is common experience that
knowledge of English language helps in India. However,
English was introduced as a second language and was
not a introduced as medium of instruction. Therefore,
we thought it fit to include some questions to gauge
response to this particular intervention by the government.
Almost 93 per cent of the respondents said that they
expected the knowledge of English would be useful for
their child. 20 per cent out of the 100 families surveyed
said that English should be introduced in Balwadis (i.e.
pre-primary school) itself; 59 per cent said that it
should be introduced in std. I, while 12 per cent were
in favor of introducing it in V std. (4 did not find
English useful, 5 did not respond).
It
was revealing to find that almost 80 percent of the
families wanted English to be introduced at a very early
age i.e. in or before I standard. This, in fact, points
towards the a certain amount of upward mobility of the
parents and their rising aspirations.
IV.
Expenses involved in going to School
The costs on education were divided into three parts
(however, we were not able to incorporate the opportunity
cost of a child’s education ). The first one was
IV.1 Expenditure on accessories, books and uniform
For each of these categories, we asked if it was given
free of cost to the student by the government; if not
then what was the yearly expense on that item.
• Only
accessories: Accessories would mainly consist of raincoat,
waterbottle, school bag, slippers etc. per year. Here
15 per cent of the students got these free, the average
expense for the remaining 85 per cent was Rs. 258 per
year (maximum was Rs. 1,500 and minimum was Rs. 50).
• Only books: 33 per cent of the students reported
that they got free books. For the remaining the average
expenditure on books was Rs. 350 per year (maximum was
Rs. 1000 and minimum was Rs. 45).
• Only uniform: 45 per cent of the students got
the uniform free, for the remaining average expenditure
on uniform was Rs.372 per year (maximum was Rs. 700
and minimum was Rs. 150).
• Accessories, uniform and books put together
: For only 12 per cent of the students all three were
free. The average cost of accessories, books and uniform
(i.e.ACABU) for the remaining students was Rs. 671 per
year (max. Rs. 2000 and min. Rs. 100).
Thus
we find that very few families get all these items free.
We feel that at least, books and uniform should be made
available free of any charge to all the poor students.
IV.2
Expenditure on tuitions
It has been found that the quality of teaching in most
of the schools has gone down. To rectify this, the parents
have to send their children for extra coaching. This
is called sending children for tuitions. We were interested
in finding the expenses involved in doing this. This
is the financial burden which falls on the parents because
teachers are not teaching properly. Declining standards
have been observed across the board in all kinds of
schools, including the expensive, private schools. However,
here we were interested in finding how the poor families
are affected by lowering academic standards.
a.
If we consider the families, 49 out of hundred families
sent their children for tuitions. What was the financial
status of these families? The monthly average per head
expenditure for the 49 families turned out to be Rs.472,
while for the sample it is Rs. 507. Thus tuition going
does not seem to be related directly related to the
financial status of the family. It could be other factors
like perceived need for education, educational background
of the parents, easy access to tuitions, quality of
teaching in school which affect tuition-taking.
b. Out of 229, 88 children were found to be taking tuitions
i.e. 38 per cent. Out of these 45 were boys and 43 were
girls. Thus 38 per cent of the total boys (i.e. 45 out
of 119) and 39 per cent of the total girls (i.e. 43
out of 110) were taking tuitions. If we look at the
data standard-wise, there too we find that this pattern
continues. That is, if we examine students for the standards
I to IV we find that similar percentage of boys and
girls out of the total go for tuitions. Same feature
is observed for standards V to XII. Thus, we do not
find that more is spent on the tuitions of boys as compared
to girls for all the standards. Thus gender bias does
not seem to operative here. 69 out of 88 students (i.e.
78 per cent) paid up to Rs. 100 per month for the tuitions,
14 students (i.e. 16 per cent) paid between Rs. 100
to Rs. 150, and 5 students (i.e. 6 per cent) paid more
than Rs. 151 per month. The average tuition fees or
cost for these 88 children turned out to be Rs. 83 per
month. Surprisingly according to our sample, more number
of children from Standards I to IV were taking tuitions
(58 per cent) as compared to Standards VI and above
( 42 per cent). We were expecting that as the student
goes in higher standards, the need and willingness to
pay for tuitions increases.
c. Who goes for tuition?
The following is the break up of the students taking
tuitions.
Table III.1
Tuition Taking By Type Of School
| 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
| Type
of School |
No.
of Students attending |
No.
of Students taking tuitions |
3
as % of 2 |
| Government
School |
87
(37%) |
35
(40%) |
40% |
| Government
-aided School |
103
(44%) |
37
(42%) |
35% |
| Private
School |
34
(15%) |
14
(16%) |
41% |
| Non-reporting |
5
(2%) |
2
(2%) |
-- |
| Total |
229
(100) |
88
(100) |
38% |
In
each of the school type, around 35 to 40 per cent of
the children are taking tuitions. Thus, there does not
seem to be any major difference in tuition taking by
the type of school.
d.
Cost in terms of time spent on tuitions : Average Hours
per week- 5.15 hrs.
IV.3
Expenditure on traveling to school
a. Expenditure on traveling to school : 87 per cent
of the students reported that there are no expenses
involved here. For the remaining 13 per cent the average
expenditure was Rs. 144 per month (max. Rs.300 and min.
Rs. 5)
b. Time spent in going to school : The average time
spent in going to school was 20 minutes (max. was 45
min, min. was 1 minute).
From
this, it seems that most of the children usually go
to a near by school and usually walk down to the school.
However, out of the 7 per cent children who were not
attending school, if distance was a contributing factor
in non-attendance could not be ascertained.
IV.4
Total Cost of sending a child to school
Now we would like to find out the total cost of sending
a child to a school. The total costs would consist of
1. Average cost of accessories, books and uniform per
year per child which we have put under the title supportive
expenditure = Rs. 671
2. Average cost of tuitions per year per child = Rs.
996 (Rs.83*12)
3. Average cost of transportation per year per child
= Rs. 1440 (Rs. 144*10 as there are vacations for 2
months)
However,
all children do not spend on all these items. The information
about the number of children incurring the expenditures
and the amount being spent has been tabulated and put
forth in Table III.2.
Table
III.2
Spending Pattens Of Sample Children
| |
Type
of Expenditure |
Average
Expenditure per year, per child (in Rs.) |
No.
of children spending on it |
| I |
Supportive
expenditure |
|
|
| |
a.
Accessories |
Rs.
258 (4.2) |
194
(84) |
| |
b.
Books |
Rs.
350 (5.7) |
154
(67) |
| |
c.
Uniform |
Rs.
372 (6.1) |
126
(55) |
| |
Total
of a,b,c |
Rs.
671 (11) |
86
(37) (spending on all three items) |
| II. |
Tuition
expenditure |
Rs.
996 (i.e.Rs 83*12) (16.3) |
88
(38) |
| III. |
Transport
Expenditure |
Rs.
1440 (i.e. Rs 144*10) (23.6) |
31
(13.5) |
| IV. |
Children
spending on I,II,III |
Rs
3107 (51) |
11
(4.8) |
| V. |
Children
spending on I and II |
Rs.
1667 (27.3) |
34
(15) |
| VI. |
Children
spending nil amount on any of the above |
Nil |
20
(9) |
| VII. |
Average
per capita basic consumption expenditure per year
for sample families |
Rs.
6084 (i.e. Rs. 507*12) (100) |
|
| VIII. |
Total
no. of children |
|
229
(100) |
For
the sample, we found that only 9 per cent of the children
are having nil expenses over and above the fees, for
going to school. All the others had to spend at least
some amount over and above the fees.
The
amount which was being spent under various expenditure
items fell with in a range. The amount spent will be
examined in absolute terms and also in relative terms.
To that end we will find the share of each of the expenses
in the average per capita basic consumption expenditure
per year for the sample families. This will give us
the relative importance and implication of the expenditure
incurred on education for the family. This share has
been given in the Table IV.2.
We
found that 4.8 per cent of the children (i.e. 11 children)
were spending the maximum amount possible i.e. I+II+III
which is Rs. 3107 per year. This expenditure turned
out to be 51 per cent of the average per capita basic
consumption expenditure. This is indeed a very high
share but only a small per centage of children are engaged
in it. There were 15 per cent of the children (i.e.
34 children) who spend around Rs. 1667 per year on I
and II. This was 27 per cent of the average per capita
basic consumption expenditure.
37
per cent children were spending on I i.e. the supportive
expenditure while 38 per cent of the children were taking
tuitions. There relative shares were 11 per cent and
16 percent in the average per capita basic consumption
expenditure. A large chunk of children (i.e. between
70 to 85 per cent) have to spend on accessories and
books. In comparison, only 55 per cent of the children
are spending on uniforms as the remaining are getting
them free. Relatively, transportation services are paid
for by only 13.5 per cent children and the expenses
are Rs. 1440 per year.
V
Conclusions
1. Only 9 per cent of the children have no expenses
over and above the fees. For all the other children
some amount over and above the fees has to be spent.
2.
Almost 50 per cent of the families were sending their
children for tuitions. We did not find a positive relationship
between financial status and the phenomenon of sending
the child for tuitions. Moreover, there did not seem
to be any major difference in tuition taking by the
type of school. There was no gender-bias observed in
sending a child for tuitions.
3.
37 per cent of the children had to spend on accessories,
books and uniform. This amount is around 11 per cent
of the average per capita basic consumption expenditure.
38 per cent of the children were taking tuitions. Thus
almost 40 per cent of the children seem to be spending
moderate amounts (i.e. between 11 to 16 per cent of
expenses) on education over and above the fees. 70 to
85 per cent seem to be spending low amounts on accessories
and books.
4.
Due to high illiteracy amongst the parents, almost 70
per cent of the children did not have any one to help
them in their studies at home.
5.
80 per cent of the families wanted English language
to be introduced in I std or before it.
–
dsathe@unipune.ernet.in
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