The Output Oriented Measures of Technical Efficiency and Its Determinants in Primary and Upper Primary Level of Education in India

Abstract

Output-oriented technical-efficiency (OUTTE) of primary, upper-primary education for General-Category-States (GCS), Special-Category-States (SCS) and Union-territories (UT) of India using non-parametric Data-Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is estimated, creating two frontiers for GCS, SCS&UT over 2005–06 to 2010–11. Net-enrolment-ratio, percentage of students getting 60 % marks and above are outputs; number of schools per-lakh population, teacher-pupil ratio, classroom-student ratio, percentages of teachers with qualification graduate and above are inputs representing quality for both output-input. Most of the States/UT is technically inefficient; output can increase with same input-usage. OUTTE of not all the states/UT has shown improved performance. Higher literacy-rate or educational-development-index does not imply better OUTTE. Second-stage panel-regression show the determinants OUTTE vary between category and level and highlight importance of policy, infrastructure and state-specific variables. OUTTE having regional variability is determined positively by the availability and utilization of central grant (AGM), ratio of girls to boys getting free text book, proportion of para-teachers among the total teachers in school, para-teacher’s qualification; whether graduate and above, state’s per-capita net-domestic-product-from-service-sector, density of population, percentage of school having drinking-water, common-toilet, getting school-development-grant, proportion of SC-teachers and SC-enrollment. Proportion of without-building-school, single-teacher-school, single-class-room-school, proportion of people below the poverty line, inequality in the distribution of income of the State has negative effect on OUTTE Both primary and upper-primary GCS-school has high technology-closeness-ratio implying maximum output producible from an input-bundle by a GCS-school is high compared to SCS&UT-school. It shows less benefit of a input-bundle from SCS&UT-school having greater elasticity of OUTTE with respect to AGM.