India falls short in female literacy compared to its neighbours: Study

As per new study, India’s school education system is under-performing in terms of quality in female literacy when compared to its neighbours, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal.
These findings were released by International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity (or Education Commission). It shows that India’s education system is under-performing.
What the study says?

• The proportion of women who completed five years of primary schooling in India and were literate was 48%, much less than 92% in Nepal, 74% in Pakistan and 54% in Bangladesh.
• The female literacy rates in India went up by one to 15% after completing two years of schooling. Corresponding numbers for Pakistan and Nepal were three to 31% and 11 to 47% respectively.
• Around the world, female literacy rates are improving. However, it is not clear if that is because of improvement in school quality.
• India ranks low in global indices of female literacy as well. African countries Rwanda, Ethiopia and Tanzania all rank higher than India.
• India was ranked 38th among the 51 developing countries for female literacy rates when countries are ranked by earliest grade at which at least of the women are literate.

How study was conducted?

• For this research, researchers had devised a way to measure the quality of education around the world, with a specific focus on girls.
• They had used data from nationally representative Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) which is one of the most comparable data sources on living standards in developing world.

Month: Current Affairs - October, 2016