In our bestselling book, “Breakpoint: The Crisis of the Middle Class & The Future of Work”, we have an entire chapter dedicated to the rapidly rising cost of living in urban middle class life in India. By our estimate, cost of living is doubling every 8-9 years in India. Alongside the rapidly rising cost of healthcare & transport in India is the equally sharp surge in the cost of educating one’s children. Vijay Jadhav writes for IndiaSpend:
“Private school fees are 10 times government school fees, and nearly four in ten secondary students pay for coaching on top… An average student in government school incurs Rs 2,863 per year in education-related costs, compared to Rs 28,693 in private schools…. These figures capture reported spending, but may not include all expenses households incur. “There are a lot of hidden and allied costs of education and coaching. Parents often report only fees, but there are additional costs like transport for private coaching, which are not captured.””
Although it costs the best part of Rs 50K p.a. to put a child through private school, 28% of India’s students are in such schools. We know from our research for Breakpoint that the average middle class family earns Rs 11 lakhs per annum. Assuming that such a family has two children, around 10% of its disposable income is going in paying for children’s education.
The education spending story does not end there. Mr Jadhav writes: “About one in ten students (11.6%) at the pre-primary level take coaching, rising to—as we said—almost four in 10 (38.1%) at the secondary level.
Average coaching expenditure rises from Rs 525 at the pre-primary level to Rs 6,311 at the higher secondary level….
“As children move to higher grades, the cost of education increases. Entry to higher education is now almost totally driven by the entrance examinations and the coaching industry is the gatekeeper there,” said Kishor Darak. “Coaching centres teach techniques of cracking exams. Almost any child cannot crack those exams without such coaching support that preaches ‘academic manipulations,” he added.
Research based on data from the Annual Status of Education Reports has found that private tutoring is linked to better learning outcomes, suggesting that households use coaching to support school learning. The findings also suggest that reliance on private tutoring may point to limitations in the school system.”
And after all of this spending and effort, the Indian graduate finds that the unemployment rate for graduates is 10x that of illiterates. The few lucky graduates who do get a white-collar find that it pays a fraction of what a construction industry worker in Mumbai or Delhi earns. Please read Breakpoint to understand why India’s education system is broken and how it can be reformed.
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