World Bank recently released it's Human Capital Index report. Among other aspects of living, the report also addresses key areas in education. The three indicators included in the report which address the education of children in a country are Expected Years of School, Harmonized Test Scores, and Learning-Adjusted Years of School.
The three indicators focus primarily on school education since one of the main focus of Human Capital Index report is to find out if early health care and education prepare children to succeed and prosper as adults in a rapidly changing world.
Expected Years of School
Expected Years of School is the number of years of school a child can expect to attain by their 18th birthday if they start preschool at age 4 and given enrollment rates in the country where they live, for a maximum of 14 years.
The South Asia average is 10.5 while the worldwide average is 11.2.
India fares lower on this scale than the South Asia average with expected year of school at 10.2. In case of girls, the expected year of school is 10.3 which is higher then the number for boys at 10.1.
Harmonized Test Scores
Harmonized test scores combine data from major international student achievement testing programs into common units, where 300 represents minimal attainment, and 625 represents advanced attainment.
In this criteria, India has scored 355 which is only marginally above the standard for minimal. Again girls have better scores on this indicator than boys. While the score for girls is 362, the score for boys is 347.
India's score is lower than South Asia average at 364 and world average at 431.
Learning-Adjusted Years of School
This indicator discounts time spent in school by a factor measuring how much children learn. It is calculated by multiplying Expected Years of School by Harmonized Test Scores as a fraction of the advanced attainment benchmark score of 625.
On this indicator, India has scored 5.8 which is lower than South Asia average at 6.2 and world average at 7.9. The score for girls is 5.9 and for boys is 5.6.
These indicators certainly show that India needs to work more to reach the average scores for South Asia combined.
Meanwhile India has rejected the findings of the World Bank's Human Capital Index (HCI), which has placed the country at 115th position out of 157 countries.
"The government of India, therefore, has decided to ignore the HCI and will continue to undertake its path-breaking programmes for human capital development aiming to rapidly transforming quality and ease of life for all its children," the Finance Ministry said in a statement.
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