Status of School Attendance and Completion Rates in the Context of Universalisation of Education in India

It is well known that school education helps children to acquire knowledge to prepare for better standard of life. School education consists of primary, upper primary and secondary education stages. The paper uses four rounds of household data on children's current educational status collected by The National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) i.e. 50th (1993–94), 61st (2004–05), 66th (2009–10) and 68th round (2011–12) to examine the status of school attendance and educational status (never attended, drop-out, level of enrolment) of children in the specified age groups of 6–10, 11–13 and 14–15 years; completion rates at various stages such as primary (class 5 at age 12 years), upper primary (class 8 at age 15 years) and secondary (class 10 at age 17 years). Probit model is used to find out the factors such as location, socio-economic category, education levels of the household members, household expenditure on children's school education, type of school (government or private) and gender of the children affecting the completion rates at different stages which have bearing on the Universalisation of school education (USE)