Status of School Education in Bihar: An Analysis of UDISE+ 2020-21 Data Collected under Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan

 Arun C Mehta, Formerly Professor & Head of the EMIS Department, NIEPA, New Delhi

 Introduction

Since its independence, India has made spectacular progress concerning all aspects of school education, including universal access, participation, and retention. Still, the goal of universal school education is far out of reach. Quality of education is one of the significant areas of concern because many activities are now focused on improving learners' ability to read and write with understanding. Despite impressive progress, there are states far behind the others; without bringing all such states at par with the others, the dream of universal school education is not likely to be cherished shortly.

Bihar is one of the major states of India, with a 22,359 thousand child population which is 11.79 percent of the total population of India (1,89,593 thousand) of age 6 to 14 years. Almost every 12^th child of 6 to 14 years of India is located in Bihar. In addition, 93,459 (6.19 percent) of the total 15,09,136  schools covered under UDISE+ 2020-21 are located in Bihar. Without Bihar attaining the status of universal school education, India cannot achieve the goal for which concerted efforts are required to finish the unfinished task. Over time, Bihar, like other states of India, has made progress toward universalization. With a little push, it can move fast towards attaining the goal of universalizing elementary education, which would eventually help India achieve the goal of universal school education.

Another primary reason for picking up Bihar for detailed analysis is because the author of this article (Prof. Arun C Mehta) was closely associated with the state from the time of the Bihar Education Project, which later necessitated launching similar programs, such as DPEP and later SSA, on a pan-India basis. As a member of the UNICEF Mission to review the Bihar Education Project, popularly known as BEP, in 1994, the author got an opportunity to visit seven BEP districts of the undivided Bihar, which helped him to understand the ground reality to a great extent.

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Revamping Student Database Management Information System In-sync with UDISE+ 2022-23

 Arun C Mehta
Former Professor & Head of the EMIS Department, NIEPA,  New Delhi

The Background

DISE (District Information System for Education) which later become the UDISE and is now popularly known as Unified-DISE or UDISE-plus was initiated in 1994-95 at the time of launching one of the mega programs of the Government of India toward universal primary education i.e. District Primary Education Programme (DPEP), over a period of time in a phased manner the same was extended first to the entire elementary level of education (Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan) and later to the secondary and higher secondary level of education (RMSA). The entire collection of school education data is being managed through the UDISE which has become the only source of statistics on school education in India with effect from the year 2012-13, the year in which the UDISE got the status of official statistics and all parallel collection of the information system was abandoned and UDISE remain the only source of information on school education statistics in India.

Even though widespread improvements were achieved in data collected through UDISE, but fingers have been raised on enrolment data collected through it which do not consider to be consistent which is reflected in the Table presented below:

Enrolment in Grades I to XII, 2012-13 to 2019-20

All India

Year	Enrolment
	Total, Grades I to XII	Change over Previous Year	%age Change
2012-13	25,42,75,128	-
2013-14	25,85,10,656	42,35,528	1.67
2014-15	25,94,70,306	9,59,650	0.37
2015-16	26,05,96,960	11,26,654	0.43
2016-17	25,13,36,317	-92,60,643	- 3.55
2017-18	25,09,89,193	-3,47,124	- 0.14
2018-19	24,83,38,584	-26,50,609	-1.06
2019-20	25,09,71,683	26,33,099	1.06
2020-21	25,38,04,461	28,32,778	1.13
Change over 2012-13	-	-33,03,445	- 0.19

                         Source: UDISE, different years.

SDMIS: 2016-17

Over a period of time, efforts were made to further improve the reliability and consistency of enrolment data among which the introduction of SDMIS in sync with UDISE in 2016-17 was the most prominent one which was initiated by NIEPA in consultation with the Department of School Education of the Ministry of HRD/Education. A specially designed SDMIS Data Capture Format was launched which initially had a total of 41 parameters and the idea was to generate UDISE enrolment based on the details of individual student information. Apart from the inconsistency of data, mismatching of enrolment by category, the medium of instructions, and age was another major issue because of which UDISE enrolment data was not considered reliable even though time lag in educational statistics was brought down from earlier 7 years to less than a year at the national level and only a few months at the state and district levels apart that all data gaps were bridged and the same was made available to users at all the levels, such as cluster, block, district, states and also at the national level.

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Downloading of UDISE Data from NIEPA & Ministry of Education Portals

 

By

Arun C Mehta

Formerly Professor & Head of EMIS Department

NIEPA, New Delhi

An attempt has been made in the present article to make data users aware downloading of UDISE+ data from the NIEPA & UDISE+ data portals concerning School Education Samagra Shiksha in India.

As we know that Unified District Information System for Education or Unified-DISE/U-DISE is the main source of information on educational statistics and is currently being managed by the Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education, Government of India with effect from the year 2018-19 onwards before which it was initiated and managed by one of the apex educational planning institutions and technical arm of the Ministry of Education, namely the National Institute (University) of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA/NUEPA), New Delhi for the period from 1994-95 to 2017-18.

In this note, details of data available, how to download a publication or a set of data, and the level at which the same is available are explained which the young researchers/scholars would find useful. Apart from the UDISE+, there is no other source of information on school education on regular basis. However, the Census of India, NSSO, NFHS, and All India School Education Survey (AISES) are also used to disseminate information on educational variables occasionally. The latest AISES as a part of its Eight Survey was conducted in the year 2008-09. NCERT is also used to conduct the National Achievement Survey (NAS), the first of which was conducted in 2017, and the latest, second NAS was conducted recently in November 2021 details of which are now disseminated on its official website. 

DISE at NIEPA was initiated by Late Prof. Yashpal Aggarwal which later took it to new heights and nurtured by Prof. Arun C Mehta from 2002 to 2017 (January) and the same was located in the Department of Educational Management Information System (EMIS) of NIEPA, New Delhi. Professor Mehta was the founder  Head of the Department (HoD) and incidentally, the last HoD of the EMIS Department. During his tenure, DISE scaled new heights and got recognized as the Official Statistics by the Government of India, and received several prestigious awards.

However, the real hero of the whole exercise towards strengthening educational statistics was the district, block, and state MIS Coordinators from across the Country as well as the Cluster and Block Resource Coordinators and the respondents, the School Head Masters, teachers, and principals all who contributed significantly towards strengthening educational statistics in the Country; their contribution is immense and must be recognized and rewarded. Many of the programmers, data entry operators, and state and district In-charge of EMIS/DISE/UDISE+ have got vast experience managing EMIS at their level are contractual and low salaried, and must be acquired in the state services as and when such opportunities are there; they are the state assets and their services must be adequately used at all levels. While strengthening UDISE, many of them have now become age-bar and has no opportunity elsewhere. Needless to say that the school education plans across the Country under the umbrella of SSA, RMSA, and now under the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan are formulated based on the UDISE data to which our friends had immensely contributed.

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National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) & World University Ranking (WUR) 2022

 

 

Arun C Mehta

Formerly Professor & Head of EMIS Department, NIEPA, New Delhi

In this note, we briefly discuss and take a view of the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) & World University Ranking (WUR) 2022 with regard to higher education institutions in India which is respectively initiated by the Ministry of Education, Government of India and Times Higher Education Magazine. 

National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF)

The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) was initiated by the Department of Higher Education of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (now Ministry of Education) in 2016 which categorized institutions under universities, institutions, engineering, and pharmacy. Initially, because of the poor quality of the data, no ranking was announced in the case of the B category institutions. However, later the quality of data improved and new categories of institutions were added.

In this brief note ranking of the first ten universities and institutions right from 2016 to the latest 2022 is glanced at. In the latest 2022 ranking, Teaching Learning and Resources (weight-age 0.30), Research and Professional Practices (weight-age 0.30), Graduation Outcomes (weight-age 0.20), Outreach and Inclusivity (weight-age 0.10), and Perception (weight-age 0.10), are the parameters which have been used broadly in ranking institutions. Each of these parameters is further sub-categorized through which the institutions are ranked. National Board of Accreditation (NBA) is continued to be the Ranking Agency on behalf of NIRF for 2022.

The latest NIFR released on 15^th July by the Minister of Education has categorized different institutions falling under Overall, Universities, Colleges, Research Institutes, Engineering, Medical, Management, Pharmacy, Dental, Law, and Architecture institutions.

The NIFR Dataset

In the 2022 ranking, all candidate institutions, independent of their discipline or nature have been included in the given overall ranking provided that they have a total strength of 1,000 students in undergraduate and/or postgraduate programs. As many as 18,875 universities, colleges, institutions, etc. have participated in NIFR 2022 Rankings. It may be recalled that as per the AISHE, there were about 1,043 universities, 42,342 colleges, and 11,779 stand-alone institutions in the Country data from which were collected during the year 2019-20; thus indicating that a good number of such institutions are still out of the reach of NIFR in 2022.

The NIFR 2022 has specified the process through which the institutions had to provide the data. Institutions that were desirous of participating in the ranking process were required to submit the data in the format which is specifically designed by the NIRF. The NIRF 2022 made it mandatory for participating institutions to upload their data on their website so that it is publically visible to anyone.

The finalized data submitted after the comments and observations received from the NIRF must be made available on its website and must be remained there for at least three years all of which would help in improving the transparency and overall quality of data. Had there been a need, the accreditation team had to physically visit the institution concerned and scrutinize the records. The interested institutions needed to register themselves on the NIFR portal.

NIRF: 2017 to 2022, OVERALL Rankings

Name	Score	2022	2021	2020	2019	2018	2017
		Rank
Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, (Tamil Nadu)	87.59	1	1 (86.76)	1 (85.31)	1 (83.88)	2 (81.39)	2 (73.97)
Indian Institute of Science  Bengaluru, (Karnataka)	83.57	2	2 (82.67)	2 (84.18)	2 (82.28)	1 (82.16)	1 (82.28)
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai (Maharashtra)	82.35	3	3 (82.52)	4 (80.75)	4 (78.62)	3 (79.20)	3 (71.78)
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi,  New Delhi(Delhi)	82.22	4	4 (81.75)	3 (81.33)	3 (78.69)	4 (73.97)	5 (64.18)
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh)	77.83	5	5 (76.50)	6 (74.99)	6 (79.07)	7 (65.39)	7 (60.69)
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur (West Bengal)	75.94	6	6 (75.62)	5 (75.85)	5 (74.31)	5 (71.39)	4 (68.43)
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee,  Roorkee (Uttarakhand)	71.48	7
			7 (71.40)	8 (68.48)	8 (67.68)	8 (64.93)	9 (59.84)
IIT Guwahati, Guwahati (Assam)	69.75	8	8 (69.26)	9 (68.81)	9 (65.47)	12 (60.16)
All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi (Delhi)	69.57	9	Maybe AIIMS is included for the first time in NIRF 2022
Jawaharlal Nehru University,  New Delhi (Delhi)	67.25	10	9 (66.61)	8 (68.76)	7 (68.68)	6 (67.57)	6 (61.53)
BHU Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh)	64.81	11	10 (63.10)	10 (62.03)	10 (64.55)	9 (63.52)	10 (58.92)
Anna University Chennai (Tamil Nadu)						10 (62.82)

Note: Overall ranks were not awarded in 2016, Source: NIRF, different years. Readers are requested to refer source of information and provide a full reference to the contents used.

 

NIRF Overall Ranking: 2017 to 2022, First 10 Institutions

In this brief note, we take a review of the first ten ranked institutions that found a place in NIRF 2022 which includes all types of institutions including universities, colleges, institutions, and other types of institutions mentioned above. The objective is to see how these first 10 ranked institutions performed in the past years starting the first year of NIRF i.e. 2016; unfortunately, NIFR 2016 does not present an overall rank but has ranked for each of the four categories considered in ranking in that year. Because of this, the past performance of the first 10 institutions is viewed between the years 2022 to 2017.

The analysis is summarised in the form of a Table which indicates that by and large, the first 10 ranked institutions that found a place in the overall ranking in 2022 have also had high ranks since the beginning of NIRF 2017. However, there are a few exceptions that indicate improvement in the case of a few institutions and a slight decline in the case of a few others.

Further, it has been observed that the highest first ranked institution though it is on the top of the list but still not perfect as their overall scores are far below 100, an institution can attain as per the NIFR framework but not a single institution is near in achieving the same. Further, it has also been observed a wide gap in scores of the first and the tenth institutions in 2022 in the overall rank. Further, it has been observed that the gap in scores of the first ranked and the second rank institutions in 2022 is wide and significant and it would be rather difficult to bridge the gap in the coming years.

 It is also important to discuss whether NIFR ranking is required to be computed every year or once in five years? How much change/improvement does occur in an institution in a year?  Do they change swiftly between the two years? The gap between the top and the bottom and middle-ranked institutions is so wide and significant that the bottom-ranked institutions will take longer or may not even be able to bridge the gap. On the other hand, it is rather difficult also for the top-ranked institutions to further improve their overall scores which are visible in their 2022 scores. It has also been observed that compared to the initial scores in 2017, scores look very impressive in 2022 but the last three years' scores of these institutions suggest that even the top-ranked institutions reached a saturation point and it would be difficult for them to further improve.

The initial wide gap in scores may also be attributed to the fact that institutions were not equipped to have all the requisite information to submit to the NIFR  portal. But with each passing year and also because of the gradual improvement in the higher education database through the AISHE, the same has improved significantly and institutions now are better equipped to submit the information required for NIRF ranking.

NIRF in India was initiated 3 years after such an exercise was undertaken globally to rank the global World in universities in the year 2013. Like the NIRF ranking, the World University Ranking is also available for the year. As many as 13 performance indicators spread over areas of the international outlook, research, knowledge transfer and teaching have been used in the global international ranking in 2022. As many as 2,100 institutions (mostly universities, around 1,600) from all over the World from about 99 countries participated in the World University Ranking in 2022 all of which have not been assigned ranks because of the deficiencies in the database which they submitted. Both the University of Oxford in the area of teaching and Harvard University in the area of research continued to be the best universities in the World. 

So far as the participation of India in the World ranking is concerned as many as 89 institutions participated in 2022 but all of them have not been assigned the ranking and they are termed as Reporters; the number of such institutions is around 18 which includes Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Management Development Institute, Mizoram University, University of Kerala, etc.

The outcome of the NIFR ranking is also reflected in the World ranking; the Indian Institute of Science located in Banglore is the highest ranked institution from India and is placed in the rank bracket of 301 to 350; this means that IIS is amongst the top best 350 institutions of the World.

Next to IIS, there are a few institutions that are otherwise not ranked in the first 10 ranked institutions in NIFR 2022 but has found a place in the rank bracket of 351 to 400 which includes the newly established IIT Ropar and IIT Indore which are followed by institutions like Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology and Alagappa University, the only two institutions from India to find a place in the rank bracket of 501 to 600.

Two of the top-ranked universities in the NIFR 2022, namely the Jamia Milia Islamia, Delhi University, and Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi could find a place only in the rank bracket of 601 to 800. On the other hand, the Aligarh Muslim University is ranked between 801 to 1000 bracket so the newly entered KIIT is in this bracket. Surprisingly none of the top-ranked IITs such as IIT Madras, IIT  Mumbai, and IIT Delhi as per NIRE 2022 could find a place in the World ranking. Overall only 35 Indian universities could find a place in the top 1,000 universities of the Wolrd.

Many of the USA Universities like the previous years ranked at the top as it seems that the barring one, the World's top universities are all located in the USA; that is the reason why a large number of students not only from India but also from across the World used to prefer universities located in the USA; top 10 universities of the World are the University of Oxford, California Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Cambridge, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, University of California, Berkeley, Yale University, and The University of Chicago. India still needs continued effort not only to further strengthen its higher education sector but a lot more also is required to improve the efficiency of its school education sector without which the higher education sector cannot grow on its own which has become necessary because of its resolution to attain a high GER of 50 percent in the year 2035.

The World ranking is also available region wise and the same for the Asia Region reveals that India is far behind and needs concerted efforts to improve its higher education & keep pace with the other countries of the world, such as China for which it needs to allocate at least 6 percent of its GDP as has been reassured in the recently adopted NEP 2020. As many as 829 institutions reported data from the Asia Region of which 89 institutions were from India out of which 18 could not be assigned ranks and are termed only as the Reporter.

With a cursory look at the ranks of the Indian institutions, one gets the impression that a few not much known have found a place in the ranking in the Asian Region on the other hand institutions, such as JNU, JMI, AMU and many of the top-ranked IITs ranked in the 1^st to 10^th  in NIFR 2022 couldn’t find a place in top 150 institutions located in the Asia region. Tsinghua University and Peking University both from the Peoples' Republic of China are the best in Asia with their ranks standing at 1^st and 2^nd in 2022. On the other hand, the National University of Singapore is the third best institution located in the Asian Region. 

The top-ranked NIRF 2022, the Indian Institute of Science Banglore is the 42^nd best institution in Asia which is followed by the JSS Academy of Higher Education & Research which is ranked  65^th.  Maybe the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jamia Milia Islamia University, Delhi University, etc are the best-known universities in India but all of these institutions are ranked much lower respectively at 167^th, 160^th, in the 201 to 250^th  bracket all of which indicate that Indian higher education still needs to improve a lot to keep a pace with the best such institutions in Asia. Similarly, the top-ranked IITs could not find a place compared to IIT Ropar (68^th Rank), IIT Indore (87^th Rank), IIT Gandhinagar (120^th  Rank), Aligarh Muslim University (122^th   Rank) etc.

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Fifty-Percent-Increase-in-Higher-Education-Enrolment-by-2035-Possible-converted1.pdf (educationforallinindia.com)