Do private schools really produce more learning than public schools in India? Accounting for student’s school absenteeism and the time spent on homework

Deepak Kumar and Pradeep Kumar Choudhury

International Journal of Educational Development, 2021, vol. 83, issue C

Abstract: Do students attending private schools learn more and have higher cognitive abilities than their public school counterparts in India? Though some recent works have discussed this question, the empirical contours to address the issue remain unclear, particularly in a diversifying school education market in India. This paper examines the factors determining the inequality in children’s learning outcomes (i.e., reading and math scores) in India using the second round of India Human Development Survey data. We examine the effect of a child’s ‘school absenteeism’ and ‘time spent for studying and doing homework’ on learning outcomes, and how these explain the existing learning gap between private and government school children. We provide strong evidence that the children attending private schools have significantly better learning outcomes than their government school counterparts. However, this performance difference between private and government school-going children reduces with the increase in school attendance and the time spent in studying and doing homework by a child. The findings of the study implicate that the cognitive abilities of low performing government school students can be improved by reducing their absenteeism in schools and increasing time for studying and doing homework after school.

Keywords: Private school; Learning outcomes; Cognitive skills; Absenteeism; Homework; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:injoed:v:83:y:2021:i:c:s0738059321000481

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2021.102395

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