Education reforms based on data can cut govt spending by Rs 1.5 trn: Study

The government can sharply reduce education spends by paying heed to the research findings by two Indian economists

Reform — but not needlessly. That’s the message for Indian education policymakers from the research findings of two Indian economists — Sandip Datta of Delhi School of Economics and Geeta Gandhi Kingdon of University College London. The fiscally-strapped Indian state can save around Rs 1.5 trillion a year on education spends if it acts on data and evidence instead of preconceived notions, the paper says.

Conventional wisdom in India and abroad has led experts, economists, academics and even parents to believe that large class sizes in schools have an adverse effect on learning. Low learning outcomes have typically been blamed on the inability of a single teacher to teach students who are at different learning levels, but in the same grade; the huge ad­ministrative burden most senior teachers in the government school system grapple with; and large class sizes. It is widely known that in many government schools there are 60-80 pupils in a single classroom.

Hence, huge resources have been directed at reducing class sizes in both public and private schools. Between 2010 and 2017, the total number of elementary schoolteachers rose by 0.4 million, and the corresponding total teacher salary bill swelled by $3.6 billion in 2017-18.

But research by Kingdon and Datta shows that class sizes can be increased to an optimal level of 40-odd for science subjects and 50-odd for non-science subjects with no detrimental effect on learning levels. In fact, peer learning that happens in larger class sizes implies that classes can reach an optimal level to enhance learning outcomes.

Datta and Kingdon further suggest that there is scope for increasing class sizes in India from the current 22.8 to 40 in sci­e­nce and 50 in non-science, without hu­r­ting student lea­rning. Their findings have been pub­lished in two pa­p­ers — a RISE working paper tit­led “Class Size and Learning: Has India Spent Too Much on Reducing Class Size?”, and an­o­ther paper published by the IZA Institute of Labour Eco­n­omics earlier this month titled “Teacher Shortage in India: Myth or Reality?”. The study based on rigorous econometric analysis was possible due to the availability of data from Luck­now’s City Montessori School chain with 57,000 students spr­ead over 18 branches in the city, of which Kingdon is president.

The findings have huge policy implications for India and other countries that are reforming their education systems. India spent an estimated $3.6 billion in 2017-18 on the salaries of the 0.40 million additional teachers it appointed between 2010 and 2017, which reduced the pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) in elementary public schools from 31.2 (in 2010) to 22.8 (in 2017-18), and to 27.9 in secondary education the same year. The Right to Education Act ma­n­dates a maximum pupil-teacher ratio of 30, but adjusting for fake enrolments, the true PTR now is a low 19.8.

And here’s the rub. The net teacher deficit (vacancies) in India is far less than the government estimated number of one million. While re­search by Datta and Kingdon broad­ly confirms the large number of estima­ted teacher vacancies, it also shows that there is roughly the same number of surplus teach­ers. In fact, the net deficit of tea­chers is only 26,660. “Teach­ers across states are at present poorly allocated and adjustments and transfers can ensure that the so-called shortage is re­duced substantially,” says Kingdon.

The study has found that eight states have net teacher deficits and 13 states have net teacher surpluses. It shows that 84 per cent of all net vacancies are in Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. “It is mainly these four states that need close attention from a teacher shortage perspective,” explains Kingdon.

Moreover, 73 per cent of all net teacher surpluses in the country are in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Punjab, Rajasthan and Kerala. Here, large savings can result by introducing an attractive voluntary retirement scheme and/or stopping fresh recruitment of teachers.

The teacher shortage paper reveals that maintaining the current PTR of 22.8, rather than the maximum permitted PTR of 30, costs the exchequer Rs 55,169 crore. The fiscal burden of additional recruitment to fill the supposed (882,200) teacher vacancies that the National Ed­ucation Policy 2020 promises would be another Rs 47,879 crore per annum. “This adds up to an annual fiscal burden of Rs 103,048 crore ($14.1 billion) per annum for 2017-18, which was roughly equal to the total GDP of Madagascar or Mon­golia that year, and was higher than the individual GDPs of 86 cou­n­tries!” the paper concludes.

Kingdon, who has been arg­uing for data-driven education policymaking in India for many years, says that so far there has been no compelling empirical evidence guiding the class size, learning outcomes and consequently no data-based estimation of teacher shortages in the case of India. Policymakers have largely been guided by perceptions. It now remains to be seen what hap­pens if and when reality bites.