Study suggests ‘wealth cut-offs’ for SC, ST students in EWS-DG admissions in schools

NEW DELHI : A study has suggested that SC, ST families “above a certain wealth cut-off” should not be allowed to avail the 25% quota for the economically weaker sections (EWS) and disadvantaged groups (DG) in private schools mandated by the Right to Education(RTE) Act, 2009.

The study also found that upper-caste families in the middle-class income group are more likely to send their children to private schools than families in the same income group but from the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST).

The study found that families in the richest and poorest categories make similar school choices regardless of caste. Rich families pick private schools and the poor, government schools. However, there is a significant difference in school choice in the middle income category in which SC, ST families tend to opt for government schools and the upper castes for private.

For the study, economists Sukanta Bhattacharya, Kumarjit Mandal and Anirban Mukherjee from the University of Calcutta and Aparajita Dasgupta from Ashoka University, analysed household and school-level data gathered by the Young Lives surveys between 2002 and 2011 in Andhra Pradesh. Data was gathered from 953 households. The study also looks at the student test scores in mathematics, Telugu and English as well as a separate test on cognition.

School choice, caste, wealth

The 953 households were divided into wealth quintiles. The study does not say if the number of upper caste and lower caste families are evenly distributed across the wealth quintiles. For example, we do not know how many upper caste families are included in the bottom quintile or how many SC, ST families are in the top one.

The study says that in the top and bottom quintiles, caste was not a factor in school choice. But in the middle three groups, the study found, SC, ST families did not opt for private schools.

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The study said that this is because sending children to private schools “increases future consumption and at the same time makes current consumption costlier”. So, sending children to private schools means “forgoing current consumption for increased future consumption”.

“The regression results suggest that “higher” (general caste) and “lower” (SC-ST) castes do not choose schools differently in the highest and the lowest wealth quintiles. In the middle wealth groups , however, they choose differently: in this wealth category, higher-caste people are more likely to choose private schools for their children than their SC-ST counterparts,” the study said.

It also found that wealth has a direct correlation with quality of schooling and that wealthy households tend to send their male child to a better-quality school.

“The narrative here is that wealthy households with better-educated parents would prefer to send their male children to better-quality schools, which are English medium. The stress on English medium is due to the perceived future labor market returns on English-medium education. Therefore the wealth of the household is an important determinant of the choice of good-quality school,” the study said.

‘Wealth cut-offs’ for SC, ST

The study concludes that caste identity matters in terms of school choice only in a particular range of wealth, that is among middle-class families.

“Our analysis suggests that the differential disadvantage of belonging to the lower-caste group shows up only in the middle wealth level, where we find that members of the high-caste group send their children to private school while those from the low-caste group send their children to public school,” the study said.

The study then goes on to suggest an income cut-off for SC, ST families “above a certain wealth cut-off” citing that richer SC, ST families can afford to send their children to private schools.

“The model in this paper predicts that there exists an upper wealth level above which both higher caste and SC-ST parents send their children to private schools. This implies that, unlike the current RTE provision where all SC-ST parents can avail themselves of the RTE quota, this provision may not be given to SC-ST parents above a certain wealth cut-off,” the study said.