Massive rural-urban gap in education expenditure & internet access

The latest nationwide survey conducted by the the National Statistics Office (NSO) titled ‘Household Social Consumption: Education’ reveals that India’s rural-urban divide extends to education as well, including expenditure on education and access to digital resources.

Daily Current Affairs Quiz 2020

Key-Points

The rural-urban gap remains significant in literacy, accessibility to schools and household expenditure on education.

On Accessibility to schools, 7% of the rural households have a primary school within 1 km as compared to 87.2% in urban areas. But only 38% of the rural household have access to secondary school as compared to 70% in the urban areas on similar parameters.

The all India literacy rate among persons aged 7 years and above is 77.7%. However, for the same age group, the rural literacy is 73.5% and in the urban areas it is 87.7%.

There is a digital divide, too, with just 4% of the rural households having access to computers as compared to 23% in urban areas. While 15% surveyed population in the rural cluster has internet access, 42% of the surveyed students in the urban areas have access to the internet.

Annual average expenditure per student at secondary and senior secondary level in a rural household stands at Rs 5,856 and Rs 9,148 respectively. An urban household for the same classes spends Rs 17,518 and Rs 23,832 respectively.

Around 76% of the rural children are attending primary and middle school run by the government, while only 38% of the urban children are attending government schools and instead prefer private schools.