Does Public Spending on Elementary Education Actually Improves Learning Outcome in India?

Abstract

This paper tries to examine the link between public spending on elementary education and learning outcomes in India. Learning outcomes basically describes the measurable skills, abilities, knowledge or values that students should be able to demonstrate as a result of completing different levels of education. The study is based on secondary data. Data on expenditure on education have been taken from the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) and various budget documents. Data on the learning outcomes
have been collected from various reports of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER). The data is limited only to the learning outcomes of rural India. The period of time considered for the study is 2010-2018. The findings of the study reveal that increase in public spending does not mean increase in the learning outcome. The study also shows that the spending on schooling is gradually rising.Although there is a substantial increase in the enrollment ratio, the pupil teacher ratio and the school infrastructure, there has been little improvement in learning outcomes, especially in government schools. The study also shows that the government should focus on expenditures on teachers training which will greatly contribute to learning outcomes.