Impact of Sarv Siksha abhiyan on the average schooling years of children

Abstract

Sarv Siksha Abhiyan was started in 2001, with an aim to provide free and compulsory education to 7 to 14 year old kids across the country. Four major interventions were adopted as a part of the programme: free education, school construction, pupil-teacher ratio and free uniforms & textbooks. All four major interventions help in improving educational outcomes, as evident from the extensive literature review done on the subject. Educational attainment analysis has been limited to studying the enrollment ratio and drop-out ratios in various studies conducted till now. Some have analysed the scores of students in various subjects and class tests to understand the extent of impact of Sarv Siksha Abhiyan. But no study has tried to calculate the change in average schooling years for children in 7-14 age group.In our study, we have made an attempt to measure the increase in average schooling years. The indicator has been formulated on the basis of Barro-Lee indicator for calculating educational attainment. The indicator has been modified and instead of using 15+ age group, 7-14 years have been used to suit our present study. Results indicate significant improvement across the states, with some states reporting 60-70% improvement in schooling years over the 10 year period