Inequality in the Learning Environment: The Impact of Personal Wealth and Location on Educational Opportunities
In the heart of India, a growing divide in the educational landscape is becoming increasingly apparent. The Comprehensive Modular Survey: Education (CMS:E), conducted by the National Statistics Office (NSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) from April-June 2025 as part of the 80th NSS round, sheds light on this concerning trend.
The survey offers a stark reminder of the inequality that pervades India's classrooms. Access to better educational facilities is largely determined by where one lives and what their family can afford.
In urban areas, over 51% of students attend private unaided schools, where families spend approximately ₹29,000 per child. In contrast, in rural India, 66% of children study in government schools, where the average expenditure per child is barely ₹3,000.
The average expenditure per reported student on education by type of school shows that in rural areas, families spend the least in government schools (₹2,801), followed by private unaided schools (₹22,919) and private aided schools (₹11,244). In urban areas, the expenditure is highest in private unaided schools (₹35,798), followed by government schools (₹4,374) and private aided schools (₹20,792).
The course fee is the biggest expense in education, averaging ₹12,457 per child, but urban families pay far more (₹19,457) than rural families (₹8,120). Transportation and textbooks are significant costs, with an average of ₹5,532 and ₹2,097 respectively.
Interestingly, within families, boys receive higher investments in education compared to girls, with an average of ₹13,901 spent on boys compared to ₹12,101 spent on girls.
The survey also provides insights by gender, sector, and school type. It reveals that education today in India is less a guaranteed right and more an economic divide. The gaps in expenditure by geography and gender translate into unequal opportunities, making education a function of wealth rather than a right.
For those interested in delving deeper into the data, clean, structured, and ready-to-use datasets on Education in India can be downloaded from Dataful. Additionally, data from multiple other sources, such as UDISE+, and previous NSS surveys, can also be found on Dataful.
However, the search results do not provide specific information on who is responsible for conducting the Comprehensive Modular Survey: Education in 2025.
The latest CMS: Education Survey 2025 captures a worrying trend of a widening divide in India's learning landscape. It underscores the need for concerted efforts to bridge this gap and ensure that every child, regardless of their socio-economic background, has an equal chance at quality education.
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