Education and Social Mobility: The Kerala Experience

By P.T. Thomas

This book focuses on the provision of basic social services, in particular, access to education, as the central building blocks of any human development strategy and it also signifies a substantial contribution towards the central role of education in social mobility. In examining the impact of educational development of any society or group, the questions that the proponents of egalitarian approach ask are: Who benefits? Who loses? What is the resulting socio-economic status of the people? Although gender inequality in education is not so prominent in Kerala, the difference between communities and classes is one of the critical aspects of this broader phenomenon of disparity in Kerala. Recent studies regarding poverty and inequality show that although poverty is declining, inequality between socio-economic groups is increasing in Kerala. In this scenario, the educational backwardness of the socio-economic groups in Kerala is a matter of particular concern to the policy makers and this book hopes to provide some insight into this subject. It will be highly useful to policy makers, administrators and academicians.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Notion Press
• Release date: Dec 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9789352065097

Book preview

Thomas

Chapter 1

Introduction

Education is a key driver of economic and social success for individuals and nations. The fruits of educational development enable the people to lead better lives and offer a route where people can escape from disadvantaged family backgrounds and climb the social ladder. This can be realized only if children from different backgrounds have equal opportunities to benefit from quality education. The entitlement to higher educational qualifications results in a clear advantage when they enter the labour market. The fact that education raises earnings power in the labour market thus shows how social disadvantage works through education to generate lower income for people from less advantaged backgrounds. This is because people from disadvantaged backgrounds invest less in education than other people do and thus fewer of them accrue the wage gains associated with such investment. Higher education influences not only returns to individuals in terms of higher wages but also have other non- wage economic and social outcomes like intergenerational outcomes in education and occupation.

The level of this intergenerational mobility in a society is seen generally as a measure of the extent of equality of economic and social opportunity. It captures the degree of equality in life chances-the extent to which a person’s circumstances during childhood are reflected in their success in later life. Disadvantaged children from families at the bottom of the wealth distribution do not have the same opportunities as children from wealthier families to receive quality education from good quality schools. So these disadvantaged children can expect to earn less as adults. And the cycle of inequality and underdevelopment continues. We have a relative abundance of household data on consumption and employment in India. This has fuelled the endless debates on measurement of poverty and inequality over the last four decades. Yet to this day we know very little on intergenerational mobility, which is probably the most important aspect of inequality in an extremely hierarchical society (Bardhan, 2005). The present study, therefore, is an attempt to understand how educational experiences are related to social disadvantages and other family characteristics and their impact on intergenerational mobility in education and occupation among the socio-economic groups in the State of Kerala.

Kerala Experience

Kerala is much ahead of other major Indian States in achieving the goal of universalizing elementary education, which is reflected in the literacy rate of over 90 per cent and almost universal enrolment and very low dropout rates at the primary and middle level (Nair, 1981, Tilak, 1994, Dreeze and Sen, 1995, Thomas 2007). There is hardly any gender gap in school education (Dreeze and Sen, 1996, Chakraborty, 2005). Secondary sector has been one of the weakest links in the education system in Kerala (Ganesh, 2000, Chandrasekhar et al, 2001). While the retention rates in the primary sector have been extremely high, the dropouts have increased in the secondary stage (Thomas, 2007). In order to reduce repetition and dropout, automatic promotion has been followed in Kerala. As a result, dropout occurs mainly between 9th and 10th standards, which make mean years of schooling close to nine years. Only about 70 per cent of the children joining the first standard reaches tenth standard and, only about 50 per cent of the children appearing in the SSLC (Secondary School Leaving Certificate) examination were able to pass with 210 marks, which was the minimum required for a pass, with moderation. If we include moderation also, the number of failures was likely to be around 65 per cent. The introduction of the grading system in the school examination from the year 2004–05 onwards does not improve the situation. For instance, a student can pass the examination if he/she can score 30 per cent mark, including 20 percent of internal mark given by the concerned teachers, which is generally given without any criteria. Therefore, a student can pass the SSLC examination if he/she can score 10 per cent mark in the written examination. The recent step up in the examination results can be considered as an improvement in the quantity and not the quality of education. In order to rescue children from the consequences of such deterioration, parents are increasingly turning to the non-government and unaided system of school education, which does not follow the State syllabi, but the syllabi prescribed by the all-India educational organizations such as the Central Board of Secondary Education. The alternative system is however, much costlier. Whereas school-education in the government and the aided sectors is ‘free’ (in the sense that tuition fees are not levied), in the unaided sector, exorbitant rates of tuition fees, heavy charges for transportation, large donations for investment funds and various other levies are imposed on the students. This financial process of eliminating the relatively poor during the secondary years of schooling from quality schools is often compounded by the substantial private tuition at the secondary level, generally taken by all students irrespective of their socio-economic status.

As we move from lower to higher levels, educational institutions become increasingly differentiated and specialized. Those who have better abilities and better means, go to the better secondary schools which equip them better for the competition to take the limited places available in the institutions of higher learning. We cannot say that admission to institutions that provide education for professions such as medicine, engineering and management should be open to all without consideration of merit or means because no State has the resources to sustain such a policy. Here what can be offered at best is equality of opportunity for those already qualified for admission, and this leads inevitably to inequality of outcome. Therefore, it is likely that even discriminatory subsidization of education in favour of low income/backward communities would have only minimal positive impact; the benefits from the education system, be it open to all classes and castes, would go largely to the higher income/caste groups.

It is not enough to create a larger pool of educated people; there must also be opportunities for them to be productively employed or it might simply increase the number of educated unemployed. Unemployment has been and is the burning issue of development and perhaps the most serious form of capability failure in Kerala. The number of registrants in the live register of employment exchanges in the State is 3.84 million, constituting 12.07 per cent of the State’s population. Almost 1.43 million are registered for more than 10 years and 3.1 million have education till secondary and above (Chakroborty, 2005). The unemployment rates remain considerably higher than the all India average. The social networks that the poor have access to employment in Kerala are substantially different from those that the rich can access. For instance, a poor person’s social network may be primarily geared towards survival with limited access to networks that would link her to better jobs and opportunities. The rich on the other hand, are bequeathed with much more economically productive social networks that facilitate the maintenance of economic rank – for instance parents are able to use their social connections to ensure that their child gets into a good school, or call up a few good friends to make sure that their son gets a good job, while poor parents are more subject to the vicissitudes of chance. Connections open doors and reduce constraints. Thus, social networks constitute a form of capital which is unequally distributed. The impact of that inequality depends on the extent to which education, occupation, and earnings are transmitted across generations.

Objectives

In examining the impact of educational development of any society or group the question that the proponents of egalitarian approach ask is: who benefits, who loses, what is the resulting socio-economic status of the people? Although gender inequality in education is not so prominent in Kerala, differences between communities and classes is one of the critical aspects of this broader phenomenon of disparity in Kerala. Recent studies regarding poverty and inequality show that although poverty is declining, inequality between socio-economic groups is increasing in Kerala (Himanshu, 2007, Dev, et al, 2007). In this scenario, the educational backwardness of the socio-economic groups in Kerala is a matter of particular concern, especially in the context of high dropout rate in the secondary level, resulting in substantially less proportion of them managing to complete high school, and even less availing for higher education. It is pertinent in this context to ask the following questions:

Whether the expansion of education in Kerala has helped to reduce social inequalities in educational attainment and contributed to greater social development?

What kind of relationship can exist between the entitlement to education and the resulting intergenerational mobility among the socio-economic groups in Kerala?

How far the entitlements to educational experience and occupational mobility are related to social disadvantage and other family characteristics?

The study proposes to address the above issues by adopting a comparative study of the socio-economic groups in the three former regions of Kerala viz., Travancore, Cochin and Malabar. Such a method becomes necessary as these former regions in Kerala are diverse in terms of composition of religious community, economic development and economic status of people.

Significance

An important goal of India’s social policy is to promote equal opportunity. The reason for investigating the social outcomes of learning, therefore, relates to the traditional goal of equity and social justice embedded in most social programmes. The increased focus of active social policies means that governments need to focus more on education and education policy, to make sure that a group of disadvantaged individuals is not left behind. Moreover, since educated parents are more likely to send their children to school; the benefits of education are perpetuated from one generation to the next. In fact, the indirect spillover benefits of education are so substantial, that they are often considered to be of greater importance than the direct financial benefits that accrue from it. Thus the analysis of the determinants of investment in schooling, levels of education attained and socio-economic mobility among different subgroups in the population are of major concern for policy-makers. This academic research hopes to provide some insight into the relative merits of educational policies or other social policies aimed specifically at social disadvantage.

Review of Literature

Empirical evidence from studies conducted by social scientists makes it clear that there is significant scope for education to play a role in influencing the economic and social situations of people. The existing empirical literature is focused on the following four directions: a) the impact of investment on education and economic growth b) the impact of disadvantage on education outcome; c) the impact of education on occupation and earnings and finally d) the impact of social disadvantage on intergenerational mobility. It is the combination of the four links that may worsen the conditions of those from disadvantaged families.

Human Capital Investment and Educational outcome

Does education matter for growth? Which kind of education investment matters most? How best to allocate public funds between primary, secondary, and tertiary education? These are questions that preoccupy governments. In cross-country comparisons of education and economic growth, formal schooling plays an important role in enhancing economic growth (Barro, 1997 Barro and Lee, 1993, Hanushek, et al, 2005, Krueger and Lindhal, 2001). Most of this work concerns itself with the ‘ average’ effects of education. For example, by how much more does a country’s GDP grow if average years of schooling rise? Or by how much on average do earnings rise for another year of schooling?

The theory of human capital has long history right from the ‘Classical School of Economists’. Adam Smith (1991) considers education as another industry and he treated the acquired and useful abilities of the members of society as one category of fixed capital. Smith reflects on these progressive contemporary thoughts when he wrote about educating people of a society. He warns the readers that ‘stupid and ignorant’ individuals could become socially dangerous, unless government takes some pains to prevent it (Adam Smith 1991). Public spending on education is justified anytime that private individual, guided by their own devices, would choose sub-optimal levels of schooling from the standpoint of society. To a degree, determining what is optimal for society entails some measure of subjectivity and value judgment on the part of its citizens. If there are external benefits of private investments in education then the social returns to education will exceed the private returns (Topel 2004). Government subsidization of education will reduce the gap between private and social returns, so that individual incentives to invest in education are no longer distorted. A main argument for government subsidization is that education generates positive externalities, for instance, people exchange knowledge through social interaction outside the conventional market transactions.

However, concept of human capital was unpopular and controversial until the first half of the twentieth century and considered demeaning because it treated people as machines. This was the time when Mincer (1958), Schultz (1960, 1961), Becker (1975), Denison (1962), and others came forward with their revolutionary and controversial views on human capital. Consequently,