Free Elementary Education in Urban India

Abstract

This paper has made an attempt to analyse the disparities in the distribution of free education among different expenditure classes, social categories and gender. Such an analysis is important to see whether the distribution of free education is balanced or not after a decade of the implementation of the RTE Act, 2009. As per the Act, the government proposed to provide free and compulsory education to all the children in the age group of 6-14 years. But an analysis of NSSO data on “Social Consumption: Education” 2014-15 reveal that free education is still not universal in India and there is a large scale disparity in the distribution of it. It is seen that, lower the income class, higher is the proportion of students receiving free education and vice-versa. In Goa, 100% lower income households received free education. The proportion of OBC and OTHER category students receiving free education in all the states is highest. UTs recorded the highest percentage of ST students receives free education. Except for a few states/UTs, the gender gap in the rest of the states/UTs is very small.