Last week, we discussed two types of educational indicators namely indicators for access and coverage and those measuring efficiency of an educational system. This week we will focus on the following indicators:
Indicators on quality of education
Indicators on inputs
Indicators on facilities
Indicators on Quality: These indicators tell us how effective the educational system has been in producing the desired outputs. In other words these indicators are a measure of quality of education system or human capital formation.
1. Completion Rate: Completion rate is the ratio of the total number of students successfully completing or graduating from the last year of primary/secondary school in a given year to the total number of children of official graduation age in the population.
2. Average Score of Students in standardised tests like Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) or Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). These tests measure overall achievements of the students in language, mathematics and science.
Indicators on Inputs:
1. Percentage distribution of public current expenditure on education by level- This is defined as the public current expenditure on primary level education, expressed as a percentage of total public current expenditure on education. This indicator tells us about the priority areas of a national education policy and resource allocation. When interpreting this indicator, it is often useful to take into account the corresponding distribution of enrollment by level and then assess the relative current expenditure per student.
2. Public expenditure on education as percentage of total government expenditure- It is the total current and capital public expenditure on education expressed as a percentage of total government expenditure in a given financial year. The share of total public expenditure devoted to education allows assessment of the government's policy emphasis on education relative to the perceived value of other public investments.
3. Pupil Teacher Ratio: The pupil-teacher ratio is the measure of average number of pupils per teacher at the primary school level in a given school year. This indicator is used to measure the human resource input in terms of number of teachers relative to the size of the pupil population. However this indicator does not take into account factors that potentially affect the quality of teaching or learning like pedagogical training, experience, teaching methods, teaching materials, and variations in classroom conditions.
Indicators on Facilities: Indicators on facilities are related to availability and utilisation of facilities like buildings and learning equipments. Identifying these facilities are important and their availability and non availability determine public and private investment decisions. While understanding availability of these facilities are important in the first place, it is also equally important to understand if these facilities are optimally utilised or not. Following indicators could be used to asses if the facilities are under or over utilised.
1. Space Utilisation Rate (SUR) = [(Average Number Of Students Per Room) / (Room Capacity)] X 100%
Thus if there are ten rooms in a school to accommodate 1200 students and there are 600 students enrolled in the school, then, SUR = [(600/10) / (1200/10)] x 100%= 50%
2. Indicators on Equipments- These include indicators on equipments like furniture, teaching aids and educational supplies. Indicators of equipments of the premises are computed either school-wise or classroom-wise which depends upon the nature of the variable. Thus indicators like Percentage of schools having electricity, drinking water and toilet facilities are some of the basic indicators of facilities, which can be computed for a block and district. But for the facilities within the schools, percentage of classrooms with pupils’ desks and teachers’ chairs and tables can be considered. Percentage of classrooms having blackboard may be considered an indicator of teaching equipment. Similarly, percentage of children in a school receiving mid-day meals, free textbooks and uniforms are the indicators of beneficiaries under a particular scheme.
These are the basic five different types of indicator which can be applied to have a primary understanding of an educational system. We need to use these indicators frequently to arrive at important policy decisions or assess the system or an existing policy.
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