Pratham has just published The Annual Status of Education Report 2010. The full report is here. The report also published how schools in different states conformed to the norms of the Right to Education act. I performed a simple analysis to see how different states perform.
I constructed a simple index based on a set of 13 parameters like Teacher to Pupil ratio, Infrastructure ( office building, toilets, play grounds), libraries, Kitchen sheds etc. with respect to their compliance to their compliance with RTE norms. I used the data published in the ASER report and ranked the states on that Index. What I find is striking.
Puduchery is the most compliant state with 84.5% compliance to the RTE norms. Kerala is the second with 81.8% compliance. The third ranked state is Daman Diu with a compliance rate of 78.9%. With double digit economic growth and reports of $450 Billion invests committed at least on paper, I was wondering if Gujarat's economic progress meant better social infrastructure and indeed it is. At 4th Rank with 78.5% compliance, Gujarat is amongst the best and if you leave out small states, has really the best infrastructure for schools in the country.
What is shocking is the bottom of the table. The bottom 7 ranks are occupied by the seven sister states from the North East with Meghalaya at the very bottom of the table with only 35.9% compliance. The seven sister states only have an average of compliance of 45% almost 20% points below All India average. Speak of negligence! Interestingly Sikkim does better at 64.3% compliance and ranked in 14th position slightly below Andra Pradesh. How does Sikkim do much better than the other North Eastern states? That's some thing to look at.
West Bengal doesn't do very well for all the rhetoric of emphasis on social infrastructure in left governed states. West Bengal has only 54.7% compliance and is languishing at 21st position only just above Bihar.
The southern states, expectedly are doing better, all in top 10 and over 70% compliance except Andhra Pradesh at 13th position.
It is not really a scientific comparison. Not all parameters are considered and we have to think about if all parameters have equal weight. Still based on simple comparison, it does show that Gujarat is really pulling ahead and The seven sisters need some urgent attention.
