essay on free and compulsory education

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16.1 A Brief History of Education in the United States

Learning objectives.

Explain why compulsory education arose during the 19th century.
Outline some scholars’ criticisms of the rise of compulsory education.

Education is the social institution through which a society teaches its members the skills, knowledge, norms, and values they need to learn to become good, productive members of their society. As this definition makes clear, education is an important part of socialization. Education is both formal and informal . Formal education is often referred to as schooling , and as this term implies, it occurs in schools under teachers, principals, and other specially trained professionals. Informal education may occur almost anywhere, but for young children it has traditionally occurred primarily in the home, with their parents as their instructors. Day care has become an increasingly popular venue in industrial societies for young children’s instruction, and education from the early years of life is thus more formal than it used to be.

Education in early America was hardly formal. During the colonial period, the Puritans in what is now Massachusetts required parents to teach their children to read and also required larger towns to have an elementary school, where children learned reading, writing, and religion. In general, though, schooling was not required in the colonies, and only about 10% of colonial children, usually just the wealthiest, went to school, although others became apprentices (Urban, Jennings, & Wagoner, 2008).

To help unify the nation after the Revolutionary War, textbooks were written to standardize spelling and pronunciation and to instill patriotism and religious beliefs in students. At the same time, these textbooks included negative stereotypes of Native Americans and certain immigrant groups. The children going to school continued primarily to be those from wealthy families. By the mid-1800s, a call for free, compulsory education had begun, and compulsory education became widespread by the end of the century. This was an important development, as children from all social classes could now receive a free, formal education. Compulsory education was intended to further national unity and to teach immigrants “American” values. It also arose because of industrialization, as an industrial economy demanded reading, writing, and math skills much more than an agricultural economy had.

A woman using a very old sewing machine white watching her daughter

In colonial America, only about 10% of children went to school, and these children tended to come from wealthy families. After the Revolutionary War, new textbooks helped standardize spelling and pronunciation and promote patriotism and religious beliefs, but these textbooks also included negative stereotypes of Native Americans.

Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

Free, compulsory education, of course, applied only to primary and secondary schools. Until the mid-1900s, very few people went to college, and those who did typically came from the fairly wealthy families. After World War II, however, college enrollments soared, and today more people are attending college than ever before, even though college attendance is still related to social class, as we shall discuss shortly.

At least two themes emerge from this brief history. One is that until very recently in the record of history, formal schooling was restricted to wealthy males. This means that boys who were not white and rich were excluded from formal schooling, as were virtually all girls, whose education was supposed to take place informally at home. Today, as we will see, race, ethnicity, social class, and, to some extent, gender continue to affect both educational achievement and the amount of learning occurring in schools.

Second, although the rise of free, compulsory education was an important development, the reasons for this development trouble some critics (Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Cole, 2008). Because compulsory schooling began in part to prevent immigrants’ values from corrupting “American” values, they see its origins as smacking of ethnocentrism. They also criticize its intention to teach workers the skills they needed for the new industrial economy. Because most workers were very poor in this economy, these critics say, compulsory education served the interests of the upper/capitalist class much more than it served the interests of workers. It was good that workers became educated, say the critics, but in the long run their education helped the owners of capital much more than it helped the workers themselves. Whose interests are served by education remains an important question addressed by sociological perspectives on education, to which we now turn.

Key Takeaways

Until very recently in the record of history, formal schooling was restricted to wealthy males.
The rise of free, compulsory education was an important development that nonetheless has been criticized for orienting workers in the 19th century to be disciplined and to obey authority.

For Your Review

Write a brief essay in which you summarize the benefits and disadvantages of the rise of compulsory education during the 19th century.

Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reforms and the contradictions of economic life . New York, NY: Basic Books.

Cole, M. (2008). Marxism and educational theory: Origins and issues . New York, NY: Routledge.

Urban, W. J., Jennings L., & Wagoner, J. (2008). American education: A history (4th ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

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Free primary education is fundamental in guaranteeing everyone has access to education. However, in many developing countries, families often cannot afford to send their children to school, leaving millions of children of school-age deprived of education. Despite international obligations, some states keep on imposing fees to access primary education. In addition, there are often indirect costs associated with education, such as for school books, uniform or travel, that prevent children from low-income families accessing school.

Financial difficulties states may face cannot relieve them of their obligation to guarantee free primary education. If a state is unable to secure compulsory primary education, free of charge, when it ratifies the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, 1966), it still has the immediate obligation, within two years, to work out and adopt a detailed plan of action for its progressive implementation, within a reasonable numbers of years, to be fixed in the plan (ICESCR, Article 14). For more information, see General Comment 11 (1999) of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

'Progressive introduction of free education' means that while states must prioritise the provision of free primary education, they also have an obligation to take concrete steps towards achieving free secondary and higher education ( General Comment 13 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1999: Para. 14).

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948, Article 26)
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966, Articles 13 and 14)
Convention on the Rights of the Child (1982, Article 28)
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979, Article 10)
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006, Article 24)
UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education (1960, Articles 4)
ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention (1999, Preamble, Articles 7 and 8)
African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1990, Article 11)
African Youth Charter (2006, Articles 13 and 16)
Charter of the Organisation of American States (1967, Article 49)
Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights, Protocol of San Salvador (1988, Article 13)
Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2000, Article 14)
European Social Charter (revised) (1996, Articles 10 and 17)
Arab Charter on Human Rights (2004, Article 41)
ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (2012, Article 31)

For more details, see International Instruments - Free and Compulsory Education

The following case-law on free education includes decisions of national, regional and international courts as well as decisions from national administrative bodies, national human rights institutions and international human rights bodies.

Claim of unconstitutionality against article 183 of the General Education Law (Colombia Constitutional Court; 2010)

Other issues.

Adult education and learning; literacy, lifelong learning, right to education, older persons, technical and vocational education and training, higher education, sdg4, fundamental education, basic education

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Guest Essay

School Is for Everyone

By Anya Kamenetz

Ms. Kamenetz is a longtime education reporter and the author of “The Stolen Year: How Covid Changed Children’s Lives, and Where We Go Now,” from which this essay is adapted.

For the majority of human history, most people didn’t go to school. Formal education was a privilege for the Alexander the Greats of the world, who could hire Aristotles as private tutors.

Starting in the mid-19th century, the United States began to establish truly universal, compulsory education. It was a social compact: The state provides public schools that are free and open to all. And children, for most of their childhood, are required to receive an education. Today, nine out of 10 do so in public schools.

To an astonishing degree, one person, Horace Mann, the nation’s first state secretary of education, forged this reciprocal commitment. The Constitution doesn’t mention education. In Southern colonies, rich white children had tutors or were sent overseas to learn. Teaching enslaved people to read was outlawed. Those who learned did so by luck, in defiance or in secret.

But Mann came from Massachusetts, the birthplace of the “common school” in the 1600s, where schoolmasters were paid by taking up a collection from each group of households. Mann expanded on that tradition. He crossed the state on horseback to visit every schoolhouse, finding mostly neglected, drafty old wrecks. He championed schools as the crucible of democracy — his guiding principle, following Thomas Jefferson, was that citizens cannot sustain both ignorance and freedom.

An essential part of Mann’s vision was that public schools should be for everyone and that children of different class backgrounds should learn together. He pushed to draw wealthier students away from private schools, establish “normal schools” to train teachers (primarily women), have the state take over charitable schools and increase taxes to pay for it all.

He largely succeeded. By the early 20th century all states had free primary schools, underwritten by taxpayers, that students were required to attend.

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Free and Compulsory Primary Education Policy in Liberia: Gap Between Promise and Actual Performance

This article aims to examine the Government of Liberia free and compulsory basic primary education policy from the perspectives of public school teachers and parents, and critique to what extent the policy that promises basic education for all, children attainment of national literacy, marketable skills through computer literacy and development has evolved. A further examination through empirical analysis on enrollment and education facilities was also conducted. While it is unarguable that the policy appeals to all stakeholders, it is observed that the policy has been seriously characterized by great implementation challenges as evidence by the pathetic perceptions of the respondents and interviewees in this research. Data were collected using semi-structured interview guides to interview twenty five parents and semistructured questionnaires for twenty five primary school teachers from fifteen public basic primary schools chosen sporadically in Montserrado County. The researchers u...

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Given Phiri

ABSTRACT The purpose of study was to investigate and establish the impact of Free Primary Education in Zambia (advantages, disadvantages, challenges, opportunities etc.) in eastern province of Zambia, Chipata. The studies done in other countries have shown that this Free Primary Education is very good as it lays a good foundation for the development of the nation. This could have been due to a gap between the rich and the poor people that existed when time came to take their learners to school. The gap theory used in the study suggested that the poor parents would fail to take their children to school but the rich would do that without any problem. This could lead to many street kids, poverty, diseases, crime, early marriages, and underdevelopment and dependence syndrome in the country. Free primary education comes as a solution to all these problems and helps bring equality in development and education in the nation. The problem of street kids is easily sorted out as children have easy access to education. Poverty and diseases, crime and early marriages are also prevented as children will be busy with school work and use their basic knowledge to do a lot of developmental activities like entrepreneurship that has been introduced and also just becoming responsible children who are well informed about their rights not to involve themselves in early marriages and crime. The children learn a lot at primary level to make them self dependent when they grow up and help develop the nation. In addition free Primary Education policy has the following advantages: reduced illiterate rate, prostitution, relationships, communication, community development, easy access to education, improved standard of education and brought economic development in the country just to mention but a few. The researcher recommended that the government should do the following activities, the government should build many schools to cope with this increase in enrolments, should employ many teachers to cope with this increase in enrolments, should increase the funding to primary schools to meet the needs of the primary schools, should maintain the quarterly funding and give it on time to primary schools so that school managers can mange schools effectively, should employ qualified head teachers of the institutions to effectively use the funding and manage the school properly and should sensitise the chiefs on the dangers of early marriages and the importance of education to the subjects.

Darious Silukuni , Domna-Mika Kakana

In this study, researchers investigated the implementation of Free Primary Education Policy in selected primary schools of Kafue district of Zambia. The study’s objective was to determine the possible conflicts that had arose between learners’ access to education and supply of quality education. As a descriptive survey, the study population consisted of one hundred and twenty (120) teachers, twenty-four (24) head teachers one (2) Ministry of General Education (MoGE) officials. The teachers responded to a questionnaire while the head teachers and MoGE officials were interviewed using structured interview schedules. An observation checklist was used to record the schools’ enrolments, equipment and facilities that were available. Data was analyzed thematically as themes and sub themes emerged from the data. Finding showed that there were high enrolments in Kafue primary schools, an indication that many learners had free access to education but this led to a number of challenges such as...

olence mwape

International Journal of Scientific Research Publications

Chrine Hapompwe

The purpose was to investigate the sustainability of the Universal Free Primary Education Policy (UFPE) implemented in 2002 by the government of the Republic of Zambia through the Ministry of General Education in the wake of declining education financing to the sector. The study employed a triangulation incorporating a causal-analytical paradigm targeting 90 public primary schools in Lusaka district, Zambia with over 180,000 pupils and about 5,220 teachers as population (N). A randomised survey method was used which sampled 14 schools (n) was used with 56 structured self-administered questionnaires being distributed to four persons per school who constitute the school management structure (i.e. head teacher, deputy, senior teacher and accountant) while 1 focus group discussion of 14 teachers coupled with 3 key informant interviews with education district official, MoGE HQ official and donors’ representative were held – all through prior appointments and clearance as procedures. Simple random and purposive sampling techniques were used with primary and secondary data being obtained and analysed via thematic / content approaches for qualitative and SPSS / excel for quantitative data along with expert judgement. The study had questionnaire response rate of 95% (53). The findings along with corroborative literature attested to the fact that the UFPE Policy was a worthwhile undertaking by government as it exponentially increased public primary school net enrolment rates from as low as 60% in 2000s to over 120% by 2014 underpinned by massive infrastructural development, consistent teacher recruitments and school supplies to match demand. However, the steady declines in annual financing to the sector as discovered in the variations between 2015’s 20.2% and 2020’s 12% of national budget contrary to the 20% UNESCO / SADC minimum threshold, weakened the UFPE policy’s efficacy. Furthermore, the study identified the country’s colossal debt stock (over $11 billion), low economic growth rate (2%) compared to population growth rate (3.8%), and some prominent donors’ withdrawal of financial support to the sector budget along with funds mismanagement within the sector as being the major potential threats to the country’s sustenance of the UFPE Policy to the effect that within the period under review, grade 1 school places within the district have become so scarce that a latent phenomenon has emerged in which some parents/guardians have been showcased spending nights in some schools to access places for their children/wards during enrolment periods. The study calls on Zambian educationists, politicians and policy-makers to help rethink education prioritization. “Leaving no one behind in providing quality education by 2030” is a global education vision (UNDP SDG goal 4) which is also under Zambia’s mantle and is consistent with the fundamental propositions of the human capital theory. Policy imperatives, therefore, demand that central government walk the talk in actualising this global/regional blueprint via disciplined prioritisation of financing to the sector for sustainability of equitable quality education as envisioned in the UFPE Policy (2002) and the Educating our Future Policy (1996). Index Terms- Investigation, Sustainability, UFPE and Education Financing.

Given Phiri , mobela carlos

Abstract This paper is an examination of the impact of free primary education in twenty government selected primary school of Kabwe urban district in central province of Zambia. In order to achieve the aim above, the study objectives were to examine Free Primary Education on the provision of quality of education, to find out whether the government provides adequate funding to schools and to investigate whether FPE has helped primary school learners precede to the next stage. The study used the general questions to come up with the impact of free primary education on selected government schools. The general question was addressed through the following questions: Does the government fund the primary schools adequately? Has Free Primary Education helped in the provision of quality of education? And how does Free Primary Education enable primary school learners to proceed to the next stage? The study implemented a descriptive approach design to collect information on the impact of Free Primary Education on selected government schools in Kabwe urban district. The study participants comprised of 20 head teachers, 20 teachers, 5 pupils 4 workers at DEBS office, and the district education board secretary. Data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Computer program and Microsoft excel was used to analyse quantitative data from the questionnaires. Simple descriptive statistics, including frequency counts and percentages, and the results are presented in frequency tables, bar graphs and pie. Findings indicate that, Free Primary Education had enabled many pupils to enroll in school regardless of their socio-economic status; the achievement of the policy was associated with challenges. Among which were inadequacy and delay of funding, over enrolment, inadequate educational supplies, and inadequate teaching staff. The number of children has increased, yet the number of teachers remained constant, if not reduced. Due to large numbers, it was not possible for the teachers to give all the children the attention they deserved. This was coupled by the teachers filling to give many assignments (home work) compared with private schools. Therefore, pupils did not have enough work to practice or help them revise what they had learnt. Enrolment has increased causing congestion in classrooms, a state of affairs that does not augur well for effective learning and teaching. This has also increased the number of children sharing a desk.

Elijah Onsomu, PhD, MPH, MS.

Free primary education policy has substantially increased school enrollment rates in Sub-Saharan African countries. The success and sustainability depend on teachers’ perception, motivation, and proper implementation of the policy in the classroom. Few studies focus on teachers’ experiences and challenges in the process of implementing the policy. The current study presents theoretical reviews using the “bottom-up,” “top-down,” and incremental policy frameworks. The study used a desk review of the documents from the Ministry of Education and other published materials from an Education Research Program in Kenya. Findings suggest that there is no adequate empirical study to support the views and assertions concerning teachers’ experiences and motivation toward the implementation of free universal primary education policy in Kenya. There is a need for empirical research and programs to understand teachers’ experiences and challenges in translating education policy into practices.

Keiichi Ogawa

Universal Primary Education (UPE) policy in the form of fee abolition has become popular in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) since the mid 1990s in order to achieve Education for All (EFA). Even after learning from the past, the current UPE policy is devoid of analytical studies on its impact and challenges beyond school enrollment. This paper is an attempt to make a comparative analysis on UPE in four countries, namely, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, and Uganda, to identify common and unique themes and to examine how these seemingly similar policies are responding to the capacity and needs of each country. The results show that effective policy implementation would require considerable consultation with key stakeholders and a baseline survey that will enable systematic implementation and consideration of equity. Mutual accountability and a responsibility mechanism between the government and parents/communities is also a key to the sustainability of the UPE policy.

Oirc Journals

Effective education policy formulation and implementation are the pillars of successful education systems globally. Various policies aim at safeguarding and ensuring attainment of Universal Primary education UPE. In Kenya the success of free primary education is arguably hinged on successful formulation and implementation of various policies, which aim at expanding access ensuring retention and hence boosting transition and completion rates. However, despite existence of many elaborate policies, implementation of the same polices poses as a serious challenge to field administrators of basic education and managers. Although there is a significant increase in enrolment as a result of free primary education implemented by the government of Kenya since 2003 and establishment of new schools , there are still many obstacles in the Education sector that deny children access to primary education. Existence of challenges in FPE policy implementation hinders pupils from accessing quality education for free as stipulated in the policies provided. Challenges faced include; head teachers and their boards charging illegal levies in disguise ostensibly for services not financed by the government under FPE, lack of transparency in the use of Free primary education Funds, non- involvement of teachers and boards of management in policy implementation, partisan agitation against policies by teacher unions and populist politicians , and lack of capacity by education officials to strictly enforce the law against policy infringement, among others. This paper, presents these challenges as impediments to implementing free primary education policy in Kenyan schools. This paper is based on document analysis library survey as well as the authors experience in field administration of basic education. The paper recommends how to seal the existing gaps to ensure each child benefits from FPE for the sake of ensuring access retention completion and 100% transition to secondary school.

Abstract: Free primary education policy has substantially increased school enrollment rates in Sub-Saharan Africa countries. The success and sustainability depends on teachers’ perception, motivation, and proper implementation of the policy in the classroom. Few studies focus on teachers’ experiences and challenges in the process of implementing the policy. The current study presents theoretical reviews using the “bottom-up,” “top-down,” and incremental policy frameworks. The study used a desk review of the documents from the Ministry of Education and other published materials from an Education Research Program in Kenya. Findings suggest that their is no adequate empirical study to support the views and assertions concerning teachers’ experiences and motivation towards the implementation of free universal primary education policy in Kenya. There is a need for empirical research and programs to understand teachers’ experiences and challenges in translating education policy into practices. Keywords: Bottom Up, Free Primary Education, Kenya, Teachers, Top down

Joseph Ghartey Ampiah , Daniel Sifuna

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Right to Education Act (RTE) - Indian Polity Notes

The Right to Education Act (RTE) is important legislation that marks a watershed in the education system in India. With its enactment, the right to education has become a fundamental right in the country. In this article, you can read all about the RTE, its significance, provisions and challenges for the UPSC exam .

Read about important acts in India in the linked article.

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Right to Education Act

The Act is completely titled “the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act” . It was passed by the Parliament in August 2009. When the Act came into force in 2010, India became one among 135 countries where education is a fundamental right of every child.

“The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of 6 to 14 years in such manner as the State, may by law determine.”
As per this, the right to education was made a fundamental right and removed from the list of Directive Principles of State Policy.
The RTE is the consequential legislation envisaged under the 86th Amendment.
The article incorporates the word “free” in its title. What it means is that no child (other than those admitted by his/her parents in a school not supported by the government) is liable to pay any kind of fee or charges or expenses which may prevent him or her from pursuing and completing elementary education.
This Act makes it obligatory on the part of the government to ensure admission, attendance and completion of elementary education by all children falling in the age bracket six to fourteen years.
Essentially, this Act ensures free elementary education to all children in the economically weaker sections of society.

A few important articles that a candidate must read to cover the notes on the topic, ‘Education,’ comprehensively are linked below:

RTE Provisions

The provisions of the RTE Act are briefly described below. The Act provides for:

The right of free and compulsory education to children until they complete their elementary education in a school in the neighbourhood.
The Act makes it clear that ‘compulsory education’ implies that it is an obligation on the part of the government to ensure the admission, attendance and completion of elementary education of children between the ages of six and fourteen. The word ‘free’ indicates that no charge is payable by the child which may prevent him/her from completing such education.
The Act provides for the admission of a non-admitted child to a class of his/her appropriate age.
It mentions the duties of the respective governments, the local authorities and parents in ensuring the education of a child. It also specifies the sharing of the financial burden between the central and the state governments.
It specifies standards and norms for Pupil Teacher Ratios (PTR), infrastructure and buildings, working days of the school and for the teachers.
It also says there should be no urban-rural imbalance in teacher postings. The Act also provides for the prohibition of the employment of teachers for non-educational work, other than census, elections and disaster relief work.
The Act provides that the teachers appointed should be appropriately trained and qualified.
Mental harassment and physical punishment.
Screening procedures for the admission of children.
Capitation fees.
Private tuition by the teachers.
Running schools with no recognition.
The Act envisages that the curriculum should be developed in coherence with the values enshrined in the Indian Constitution, and that which would take care of the all-round development of the child. The curriculum should build on the knowledge of the child, on his/her potentiality and talents, help make the child free of trauma, fear and anxiety via a system that is both child-centric and child-friendly.

Significance of RTE

With the passing of the Right to Education Act, India has moved to a rights-based approach towards implementing education for all. This Act casts a legal obligation on the state and central governments to execute the fundamental rights of a child (as per Article 21 A of the Constitution).

The Act lays down specific standards for the student-teacher ratio, which is a very important concept in providing quality education.
It also talks about providing separate toilet facilities for girls and boys, having adequate standards for classroom conditions, drinking water facilities, etc.
The stress on avoiding the urban-rural imbalance in teachers’ posting is important as there is a big gap in the quality and numbers regarding education in the villages compared to the urban areas in the country.
The Act provides for zero tolerance against the harassment and discrimination of children. The prohibition of screening procedures for admission ensures that there would be no discrimination of children on the basis of caste, religion, gender, etc.
The Act also mandates that no kid is detained until class 8. It introduced the Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) system in 2009 to have grade-appropriate learning outcomes in schools.
The Act also provides for the formation of a School Management Committee (SMC) in every school in order to promote participatory democracy and governance in all elementary schools. These committees have the authority to monitor the school’s functioning and prepare developmental plans for it.
The Act is justiciable and has a Grievance Redressal mechanism that permits people to take action when the provisions of the Act are not complied with.
This provision is included in Section 12(1)(c) of the RTE Act. All schools (private, unaided, aided or special category) must reserve 25% of their seats at the entry level for students from the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) and disadvantaged groups.
When the rough version of the Act was drafted in 2005, there was a lot of outcry in the country against this large percentage of seats being reserved for the underprivileged. However, the framers of the draft stood their ground and were able to justify the 25% reservation in private schools.
This provision is a far-reaching move and perhaps the most important step in so far as inclusive education is concerned.
This provision seeks to achieve social integration.
The loss incurred by the schools as a result of this would be reimbursed by the central government.
The Act has increased enrolment in the upper primary level (Class 6-8) between 2009 and 2016 by 19.4%.
In rural areas, in 2016, only 3.3% of children in the 6 – 14 years bracket were out of school.

Criticism of RTE Act

Even though the RTE Act is a step in the right direction towards the achievement of making education truly free and compulsory in India, it has met with several criticisms. Some of the criticisms are given below:

The Act was drafted hastily without much thought or consultation being given to the quality of education imparted.
Children below 6 years are not covered under the Act.
Many of the schemes under the Act have been compared to the previous schemes on education such as the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, and have been plagued with corruption charges and inefficiency.
At the time of admissions, many documents such as birth certificate, BPL certificate, etc. are required. This move seems to have left out orphans from being beneficiaries of the Act.
There have been implementational hurdles in the 25% reservation of seats for EWS and others in private schools. Some of the challenges in this regard are discriminatory behaviour towards parents and difficulties experienced by students to fit in with a different socio-cultural milieu.
In case a student fails in the annual exam, he/she is given extra training and made to appear for a re-exam. If this re-exam is not passed, the student can be detained in the class.
This amendment was made after many states complained that without regular exams, the learning levels of children could not be evaluated effectively.
The states which were against this amendment were six states with higher learning outcomes due to their effective implementation of the CCE system as mandated in the Act. (The six states were Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Goa, Telangana and Maharashtra.)
It has been found that many states find it difficult to move to the CCE system of assessment. This is chiefly due to a lack of teachers’ training and orientation.
Another criticism levelled against the Act is that instead of increasing the standards and outcomes of the public education system in India, it passes the buck to private schools with some respect.

Making the right to education a fundamental right took more than 6 decades after independence. Now, the government and all stakeholders should focus on the quality of education, and gradually move towards having a single educational system and platform across the country for all sections of society to foster equality, inclusion, and unity.

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Right to Education Act (RTE) – Indian Polity:- Download PDF Here

UPSC Questions related to the Right to Education Act (RTE)

What are the basic features of right to education act.

Some of the basic features of the RTE are:

Free and compulsory education for all children in the age group 6 to 14.
There will not be any detention or examination until elementary education is completed. However, there has been an amendment to this (as mentioned above in the criticisms of the Act).
This makes providing education a legal obligation of the governments.
It also makes it mandatory for all private schools to reserve 25% of their seats for the EWS and disadvantaged groups.

What is the age limit for RTE?

All children between the ages of 6 and 14 have the right to free education under the provisions of the Act.

What is Article 21 of the Constitution?

Article 21 deals with the right to life and personal liberty. It is a fundamental right. To know more click on Right to Life (Article 21) – Indian Polity Notes .

What is the importance of the right to education?

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100 Words Essay On The Right To Education In English

The Right to Education Act of India is defined as follows: “The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act or Right to Education Act (RTE), is an Act of the Parliament of India enacted on 4 August 2009, which describes the modalities of the importance of free and compulsory education for children between 6 and 14 in India under Article 21a of the Indian Constitution.”

Oct 4, 2020

The Importance of Free Education in India

Updated: Aug 5, 2021

When poverty runs rampant and families cannot afford to pay for their child’s right to education, it becomes clear that education must be free for all. It is necessary to provide free education to children in a country like India, where poverty-stricken families have neither the money nor the means to give their children quality education, so they send their kids to work as laborers to bring some cash in the household instead. Free education will give these kids the opportunity to go to school to make something of themselves. Don’t these kids deserve a brighter future for themselves and their families too?

Education gives us knowledge of the world around us, providing us with a new perspective and outlook. It helps us build opinions and point of views about different things in life. Everyday we make various choices, the sum of these choices become habits, and the sum of our habits transform our lives; education is the process to ensure that the choices we make are correct.

In today’s world, education needs a sweeping change, Education needs to become both standardized and equal for the entirety of India. Teachers should be evaluated regularly to make sure that they are teaching children in the correct fashion. In fact, this same fashion should be updated regularly to meet current educational demand. In a world where these steps are followed strictly, impoverished people would be able to happily send their kids to school. They would be able to give their child a chance at a better life.

The parliament enacted the Right to Education Act in 2009 for free and compulsory education of children between the ages of 6-14. The act makes education a fundamental right for every child, requiring all private schools to reserve 25% of their seats for poor children. The Act also provides that no child shall be held back, expelled, or required to pass a board examination until they complete an elementary education.

Just like any other act, though, the RTE has its flaws:it only protects children between the ages of 6-14, rather than also addressing the needs of children between the ages of 0-6 or 14-18. India has signed the UN charter, which clearly states that there should be free education for all people aged 18 or younger. The act also stipulates that children should be assigned according to age, a good step to save wasted years. But there is no bridge course offered to prepare the children to adjust. Instead, every student is passed to the next class irrespective of the marks scored. This not only throws our children into the deep end, but promotes insincerity among them and carelessness among the teachers. This compromises their ability to withstand pressure and compete harder to excel, thus creating a generation of children who will never know hard work or competition.

Finland’s education, functioning around several basic principles, is the most effective system in the world. The first and foremost of these? Equal access to education. Another important principle is that the children should be allowed to choose their own educational paths, which should never lead to a dead end. In addition, Finland has no standardized tests in their schools besides the National Matriculation Exam; a voluntary test for students at the end of a secondary school. Most school systems are so concerned with increasing test scores, they often tend to forget what constitutes a happy and healthy student and learning environment.

In order to provide free education for children in India, the government needs to improve the tax collection mechanism so that there can be more revenue for providing quality education. Citizens must be made aware of the situation so that they can vote for parties who will focus on improving the education system and access to schooling. Moreover, the government should focus more on the health and nutrition of the students through mid-day meals.

Online schooling, albeit a great way to attend classes and to practice social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, further complicates the question of accessibility. Many kids coming from poverty-stricken households are unable to attend the online classes due to lack of accessibility of electronic devices. Most parts of India do not receive consistent electricity, leading to a digital divide. People living in rural areas have almost no access to wifi or any other forms of net link.

The government should build schools in remote areas of the country where children still have to walk miles to reach their schools. Roads should be constructed to connect the schools to all parts of the village for easy accessibility to all students as well as teachers. The government should be willing to provide students with self-learning material.

Free education will ensure that the future of India stands firm. By giving access to education to the poor, we make sure that no one is deprived of the gift of knowledge and that everyone gets an equal opportunity to shape their own future.

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”

- Nelson Mandela

Bibliography:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_Children_to_Free_and_Compulsory_Education_Act,_2009

Selected Articles from the Hindu

https://scroll.in/article/960939/indian-education-cant-go-online-only-8-of-homes-with-school-children-have-computer-with-net-link

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/09/10-reasons-why-finlands-education-system-is-the-best-in-the-world

https://www.quora.com/How-important-is-education-2

https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/kerala/2018/jan/14/kerala-make-education-free-to-all-says-experts-1753216.html

Regular Columns

On the political economy of compulsory education

Open access
Published: 24 March 2021
Volume 134 , pages 1–25, ( 2021 )

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Alessandro Balestrino ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5841-1588 1 , 2 ,
Lisa Grazzini 3 &
Annalisa Luporini 2 , 3

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We consider an economy with two categories of agents: entrepreneurs and workers. In laissez-faire , the former gain from having their children educated, while the latter, although they may profit from their own education, have no interest in sending their children to school. We first characterise the preferred education policy-cum-redistributive taxation for the two groups, and find that entrepreneurs favour a compulsory education policy while workers prefer a purely redistributive taxation. Each group would like the policy to be entirely financed by the other group. Then, we introduce a political process with probabilistic voting and verify that an equilibrium with both a compulsory education policy and some redistribution may exist in which the workers are constrained but the entrepreneurs, who benefit from hiring educated workers, are not. The redistribution compensates the workers for being constrained by the education policy.

A normative justification of compulsory education

Public Versus Private Investment in Education in a Two Tiers System: The Role of Income Inequality and Intergenerational Persistence in Education

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

1 Introduction

It is an historical fact that education policy was conceived in terms of free and mandatory public schooling (financed by public funds) when it was introduced in the West (Germany, France and later UK and US); and free and mandatory schooling is still at the basis of the Western educational systems today. Several motives have been identified for the introduction of compulsory education (Fyfe 2005 ). In Prussia, where such a system was first introduced in 1763, the protestant religious motive seem to have prevailed (on this see also Becker and Woessmann 2010 ). In France and Italy compulsory education laws, dating back to 1881 and 1861 respectively, are mainly seen as a part of the construction of a national state (see also Cipolla 1969 ). In Japan, it was the desire for modernisation that drove the introduction of mandatory schooling after the opening to the West in 1886. Also the UK and the US, by far the most industrialized countries at the time, passed compulsory education laws at the end of the XIX century (1880 in the UK, from 1885 to 1918, depending on the States, in the US); this slight delay might come as a surprise, but a possible reason for it has been identified in the need for cheap child labour—for example, Galor ( 2006 ) suggests that education was made compulsory only when a literate workforce was needed because of technological progress. In that case, parents who may profit from their children’s labour or contribution to home production (Balestrino et al. 2017 ; Cigno 2013 ) may have to be forced to send their kids to school. As far as the US are concerned, Bandiera et al. ( 2018 ) also stress a nation-building motive aimed at instilling civic values to migrants during the “Age of Mass Migration” going from 1850 to 1914—an attempt at building social capital, one might say. Footnote 1

Initially, the length of mandatory schooling and the enforcement of the attendance prescriptions were relatively limited, especially in South European countries, and generally in the countryside where children were seasonally employed in agriculture. After World War II, there has been a steady increase in the length of compulsory education in Western countries. Murtin and Viarengo ( 2011 ) show that there has been a strong convergence in the length of mandatory schooling in fifteen western European countries during the period from 1950 to 2000. At the end of the 1930s, the years of compulsory education ranged from three in Portugal to nine in the UK. After the reforms that occurred in the second half of the XX century, the range was reduced to nine-twelve years. According to Murtin and Viarengo ( 2011 ), this convergence is to be traced to the decreasing returns to educational investments, and to the related fact that all countries had reached approximately the same level of profitability. Nowadays, this convergence is further reinforced by globalisation. Higher competitivity in the global markets can only be faced with a more educated workforce.

In developing countries, however, public and free education is not always guaranteed and thus compulsory education is still an issue today, despite its being one of the main prerequisites not only for economic development but also for democratization and human rights (as an object in itself and as a primary tool in the fight against child labour). Elementary education should be made compulsory according to art. 26 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and such principle has been reaffirmed in a number of conventions and treaties up to Goal 4 of the UNDP Sustainable Development Goals, which calls for achieving inclusive and quality education for all, and more specifically “ensures that all girls and boys complete free primary and secondary schooling by 2030”.

The two motives behind the establishment of compulsory education that we mentioned before, industrialization and generally productivity needs on the one side and nation-building on the other side, are of course not necessarily conflicting with each other. However, when we consider the expansion of compulsory education that took place in Europe after the Second World War, we pointed out above that the productivity motive may have been the main pushing factor. Footnote 2

For these reasons, we focus on the productivity motive, and therefore build a model in which center stage is taken by the actors of the industrial world, entrepreneurs and workers. Footnote 3 Also, we adopt a positive, rather than a normative, viewpoint. It is of course always possible to argue in favour of compulsory education in normative terms, e.g. because of horizontal equity requirements (Balestrino et al. 2017 ). However, normative desirability is not enough to explain why compulsory schooling has become an indispensable part of the modern educational policy package. If we take the political economy view that policies are designed according to voters’ preferences by office- or policy-motivated politicians, then it follows that someone’s interests must be furthered by the presence of a mandatory education period. What we require, therefore, is an argument showing that education policy is likely to be part of a winning policy scheme in a political context. Footnote 4

Specifically, we investigate the question whether there might be a social group who is interested in introducing compulsory schooling as part of the equilibrium policy and is endowed with sufficient political power to actually do so. Footnote 5 In our model, as we said, agents are classified into two occupational groups, entrepreneurs and workers. One of the implications of such a division of society is that entrepreneurs have a stronger interest in education policy than workers. The rationale for this is not that entrepreneurs want their children to be well-educated, because they will tend to provide the required education anyway; the point is that they want the children of their workers to be educated , in order to enjoy a better work-force one generation ahead. For this reason, entrepreneurs favour compulsory schooling, financed by the tax system; such a scheme should then prevail at the political equilibrium if the entrepreneurs are able to impose their preferred policy.

Notice also that the fact that in our model both entrepreneurs and workers have a say on education policy through their voting behaviour is consistent with our focus on the productivity factor, which we saw is presumably the main one behind the more recent introductions or expansions of the compulsory education system. Indeed, universal suffrage was not present in the countries where compulsory education was first introduced (see above): due to their low education and income levels, at the time workers did not have the right to vote. Footnote 6

Additionally, we may remark that the phenomenon of “industrial paternalism” provides some indirect evidence of the fact that entrepreneurs have in the course of history cared for their workers’ education. Industrial paternalism entailed, by and large, the provision on the entrepreneurs’ part of basic health and education services to their workers. This covers a period ranging roughly from 1860 to 1950 and is quite common across different places and cultures: we have examples in Europe (France: Reid 1985 ; Italy: Ciuffetti 2004 ; Finland: Fellman 2019 ; UK: Dellheim 1987 ), in Asia (Japan: Tsutsui 1997 ), in Africa (Belgian Congo, now Democratic Republic of the Congo: Juif 2019 ) as well as in the US (Tone 1997 ). It may be difficult to say what the main rationale for this might have been, possibly a host of different motives (many of which are studied in the references above), but it is undeniable that having a minimally healthy and educated workforce tends to increase productivity – see also fn. 2 and fn. 3. Indeed, it is an established stylised fact that the children of educated parents are more likely to acquire an education (see e.g. Checchi 2005 and the references therein): then, it is plausible to conceive of the entrepreneurs as aware of the potential impact of education on productivity because they see the effects of education on themselves and their children. Instead, workers, not experiencing education first-hand, are less likely to know it as an investment for their children and may easily end up in a vicious circle whereby, generation after generation, they prevent their own offspring from reaping the benefits of having an education. Footnote 7 These are the main reasons why we regard the interpretation of the emergence of compulsory education as a response to productivity requirements as more convincing than alternative explanations such as those based on the presence of a majority of poor workers caring for their children’s welfare and voting for an education system financed by a tax on rich entrepreneurs. Note, however, that the two explanations are not contradictory and that some altruism on the part of the workers may reinforce the effects of the productivity argument.

The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 presents the model and illustrates the nature of the free-market equilibrium, while Sect. 3 introduces the policy instruments and discusses the policy preferences of the agents. Section 4 expounds the political equilibrium achieved via a probabilistic voting process. Finally, Sect. 5 concludes.

2 The model

We consider an overlapping generations economy in which agents live three periods, $i =0 ,1 ,2.$ In period 0, however, an agent has only a passive role: she receives an education and supplies the time not absorbed by the educational process for the production of a domestically produced service. We refer to agents in period 0 as “children”, in period 1 as “young adults” and in period 2 as “mature adults”. The latter two are the periods where economically relevant decisions are taken and carried out. Agents cease to exist at the end of period 2. For our purposes, then, there are two economically active generations that overlap at each time of the economy, young adults, y , and mature adults, m .

Agents live in households, each made of one parent and one child; in turn, this child will grow up to become a parent; and so on and so forth. There are two social groups, entrepreneurs and workers, who perpetuate themselves generation after generation (no interclass mobility). Footnote 8 Kids are born in period 1, when parents are young adults; in the same period, each parent decides how much education her child should receive. Education requires a money input (out-of-pocket expenditure) as well as a time input (opportunity cost); the time that the kid does not spend in education is combined with the parent’s time and employed to provide a household public good. Notice that it is important to characterize the educational process in such a way that the kid’s time allocation is explicitly accounted for: indeed, it is exactly because parents may wish to rely on their children’s time for the provision of the household public good that they may also wish to reduce or ban altogether school’s attendance. Footnote 9 This is why we model monetary expenditures and time employment as separate inputs in the children’s education.

2.1 Incomes and preferences

There are n entrepreneurs ( n /2 young and n /2 mature adults) resulting in n /2 firms. Entrepreneurs’ incomes are given by the profits generated by the firms they own. The ownership structure is thus specified: each young adult entrepreneur co-owns the firm with her parent, and they share the profits; one period ahead, the same agent, now a mature adult, will share ownership and earnings with her own child (again, this is just for simplicity, and without loss of generality). Monetary earnings are not the only objective of an entrepreneur who also cares about his reputation as a successful manager of the firm. Since the actions of the entrepreneur display part of their effect after the latter’s death, we assume that the entrepreneur will take it into account when making her decisions.

Each firm produces a share of the only good that exists in the economy, whose price is unity. Labour is the only (variable) input and there are constant returns to scale. Each worker supplies a fixed amount of labour, the same for all, and produces $y^{i} =\underline{y} +y \left( e_{\omega }^{t} ,d_{\omega }^{t}\right)$ units of the good in each productive period ( $i =1 ,2$ ), where $\underline{y}$ is the minimum level of production by an uneducated worker, $e_{\omega }^{t}$ represents the amount of educational expenditure bestowed upon, and $d_{\omega }^{t}$ denotes the time spent in education by a worker of generation t in period 0 (the total time available is normalized to 1, so that $1 -d_{\omega }^{t}$ is the time devoted to the production of the household public good). $y ( \cdot )$ is an increasing and strictly concave function satisfying

that is, both inputs into the educational process are essential in order to produce more than the minimum level, $\underline{y}$ , and they exhibit technological complementarity: the more time you spend in education, the more effective is the money you spend on it and viceversa (for example, if a kid goes to a high-quality school costing more money, this should make the time spent in education more profitable). Footnote 10 The agent’s non-working time, which is clearly also fixed, is employed in the production of a household public good.

Workers and entrepreneurs bargain over the sharing of output $y^{i} =\underline{y} +y \left( e_{\omega }^{t} ,d_{\omega }^{t}\right)$ . Let $\mu$ be the index of the power of the entrepreneurs and $(1 -\mu )$ the index of that of the workers, with $\mu >0.5$ , i.e. entrepreneurs have higher bargaining power than workers. Each firm incurs in bargaining costs that are increasing in the number of workers. We assume that such costs increase in a discontinuous way (for example because at some point a further increase in the number of employees requires an additional person to carry on the bargaining effort) implying that each firm, anticipating correctly its bargaining costs, employs a fixed number of workers that represents the equilibrium profit-maximizing level of employment. Footnote 11 We denote such level of employment by 2 s , $s \ge 1$ , where s is both the number of young adult and that of mature adult workers. Footnote 12 Given that there are n /2 firms we globally have $S =s n \ge n$ employed workers.

The objective of the entrepreneurs is to maximize their share of per-period profit $\underline{y} +y \left( e_{\omega }^{t} ,d_{\omega }^{t}\right) -w_{\omega }^{i t} -C$ where $w_{\omega }^{i t}$ represents the per-period wage,and C is the per-worker bargaining cost; while the objective of a worker is to maximize $w_{\omega }^{i t}$ . We assume (generalized) Nash bargaining and posit i) that the bargaining costs are sunk, because they are borne independently of the bargaining outcome and ii) that bargaining occurs before production costs are incurred: then, the disagreement point is $( -C ,0)$ Footnote 13 and the wage level will result from the solution of

which yields

Assuming a perfect credit market with zero interest rate, a worker thus earns lifetime income

The per-worker profit in each period will be

Each entrepreneur earns lifetime income

where the subscript $\eta$ denotes a variable pertaining to an entrepreneur. The lifetime income is given by the sum of the entrepreneur incomes in period 1 and 2, $w_{\eta }^{1 ,t}$ and $w_{\eta }^{2 ,t}$ , where

and where $\alpha$ $\left( 1 -\alpha \right)$ is the share of earning accruing to a young (mature) adult; $g ( \cdot )$ is an increasing and concave function converting, for both co-owners of the firm and in each period, the educational inputs received into income—such a function might therefore represent the returns to entrepreneurial ability as mediated by the investments in human capital. Mirroring the preceding assumptions on $y ( \cdot )$ , we posit

so that both educational expenditure and time spent in education are essential to develop entrepreneurial ability and the two inputs exhibit technological complementarity.

Also mirroring the assumptions made on the workers’ time allocation, we assume that each entrepreneur supplies a fixed amount of time for management, the same for all, and that the remaining fixed leisure time is employed along with the kid’s non-educational time to produce a household public good.

As a final remark, we notice that, given $\mu$ $>0.5$ , ( 3 ) and ( 5 ) imply that the worker’s lifetime income is lower than the entrepreneur’s lifetime income:

Turning now to the agents’ preferences, we assume that all agents are selfish. Footnote 14 Neither the workers nor the entrepreneurs derive any direct utility from their children’s education. However, while workers do not derive any indirect utility either, young entrepreneurs derive an indirect advantage from investing in their own children’s education because this positively affects next-period profits—see ( 7 ). Moreover, mature entrepreneurs exhibit a concern for their firm’s future profitability, a “reputational effect”. We choose to focus on this specific element due to our interest in the productivity/industrialisation rationale for educational policy: to keep things simple, we ignore other possible variants like assuming that the parents take pride in their offspring’s education or are worried about the effect of the children’s homework. The impact of the reputational effect on the agents’ voting preferences is discussed in Sect. 4 , where it is made clear that the introduction of such an effect brings about only qualitative changes in the results and that nothing of substance is modified.

Therefore, the workers’ utility function is

where $f ( \cdot )$ represents the utility from the production of the household public good that we mentioned above. Since the parent’s leisure is fixed, however, we write the sub-utility directly as a function of the kid’s domestic time only, with the provision that $f \left( 0\right) >0$ —i.e. that only parental time is essential to the production of the household public good.

As to the utility function of the entrepreneurs, it still depends on consumption and on the provision of the household public good. Moreover, we capture the reputational effect by directly introducing a fraction $\beta$ , $0<\beta <1$ , of future profits in the utility function:

is the profit generated in the period following the death of the entrepreneur.

We start by describing the laissez-faire economy; government interventions will be considered later on.

2.2 Agent optimisation in a free market

Each worker maximises ( 10 ) by choosing her consumption basket and the composition of her kid’s educational process subject to her lifetime budget constraint

and her child time constraint

plus non-negativity constraints for all the choice variables. Since the educational expenditure for the next generation $e_{\omega }^{t +1}$ does not appear in the utility function, and the time spent by children in education $d_{\omega }^{t +1}$ appears as a bad, it is clear that $e_{\omega }^{t +1} =d_{\omega }^{t +1} =0$ at the optimum for all workers of all generations. Thus, the problem reduces to

where the budget constraint ( 13 ) has been substituted into the utility function. The FOC w.r.t. $c_{\omega }^{1 ,t}$ is, quite simply,

Workers smooth their consumption over time. Since no worker gains from sending her child to school, however, the workers never get an education.

As for the entrepreneurs, they maximise ( 11 ) subject to their lifetime budget constraint

and their time constraint

Letting $\lambda$ denote the Lagrange multiplier for the budget constraint, the FOCs w.r.t. $c_{\eta }^{1 ,t}$ , $c_{\eta }^{2 ,t}$ , $e_{\eta }^{t +1}$ , and $d_{\eta }^{t +1}$ are

respectively, so that the budget allocation is ruled by

Again, consumption will be smoothed over the two periods; however, as far as the entrepreneurs are concerned, each of them gains from having her kid educated, because in the next two periods that kid will own part of the firm, and will contribute her managerial skills to the production process and thus first to the earnings and then to the reputation of the entrepreneur. Therefore, children belonging to this class are educated, and might indeed go to school full-time $(d_{\eta }^{t +1} =1)$ . Notice that the reputational effect ( $\beta >0$ ) raises the levels of $e_{\eta }^{t +1}$ and $d_{\eta }^{t +1}$ but is not necessary for the entrepreneurs to educate their children.

2.3 Characteristics of the free market equilibrium

In the laissez-faire equilibrium, some agents (the entrepreneurs) educate their children while others (the workers) don’t. Notice that the reason why workers are not educated is that educational expenses must be paid by the parent, but the latter does not obtain any return from her child’s education. Not only, but the time devoted to education is subtracted from the production of the household public good. The entrepreneurs, on the contrary, in addition to the gain they get from educating their children, may also take advantage from having an educated work force. This may open the way for policies that oblige parents to send their kids to school.

3 Agent optimisation and policy preferences

In order to investigate whether a compulsory public education policy could gain the support of the majority of voters, we must first assess whether such a measure can actually improve the welfare either of the entrepreneurs, or of the workers or of both categories. As far as the policy tools are concerned, we consider a compulsory education package and a linear income tax/subsidy to be employed both for financing such education measures and for redistributive purposes. We let $\tau _{\omega }$ and $\tau _{\eta }$ denote the group-specific marginal income tax rates for workers and entrepreneurs, respectively (possibly negative), Footnote 15 while $\overline{e}$ represents the minimum expenditure on a child’s education that is imposed upon households and $\overline{d}$ the minimum amount of time that a child must spend in school. Consequently e and d will now represent the amounts of money and time that are freely allocated to education by households on top of the prescribed levels. Notice that, since the time allocation for the parent is fixed, $\tau _{\omega }$ and $\tau _{\eta }$ are not distortionary, and basically equivalent to lump-sum transfers.

3.1 Agent optimisation in the presence of an active policy

Let’s take the workers. Taking into account ( 2 ) and the education policy described above, a worker per-period after tax income obtains as

Further, the worker budget constraint ( 13 ) becomes

where $\overline{e}$ appears on both sides of the constraint because the policy is publicly financed (either each household receives a subsidy or monetary educational expenses are paid by the government). The time constraint of worker’s child ( 14 ) becomes

Just as in the free-market equilibrium, the additional education expenditure for children $e_{\omega }^{t +1}$ does not appear in the utility function, and the additional time spent by children in education $d_{\omega }^{t +1}$ appears as a bad, therefore $e_{\omega }^{t +1} =d_{\omega }^{t +1} =0$ at the optimum for all workers of all generations. Thus, a worker’s maximization problem reduces to

The FOC w.r.t. $c_{\omega }^{1 ,t}$ obtains as

i.e. it has the same form as the FOC ( 16 ) obtained in a free market , leading again to consumption smoothing. But now the worker is obliged to have the kid spend $\overline{d}$ as study time. The worker will also spend $\overline{e}$ on her child’s education but this would be financed by the tax system.

Let us now consider the entrepreneurs: the entrepreneur’s budget constraint ( 17 ) becomes

Since $e_{\omega }^{t} =d_{\omega }^{t} =0$ for the reasons given above, we have from ( 6 ) and ( 7 ) that the entrepreneur’s income in period 1, 2, and 3 obtain as follows

Entrepreneurs maximise their utility function

by choice of $c_{\eta }^{1 ,t} ,~c_{\eta }^{2 ,t} ,~e_{\eta }^{t +1}$ and $d_{\eta }^{t +1}$ subject to the budget constraint ( 26 ) and the additional time constraint

Since it will become clear in the next subsection that there cannot exist a political equilibrium where both entrepreneurs and workers are constrained, we only consider interior solutions for $e_{\eta }^{t +1}$ and $d_{\eta }^{t +1}$ . The FOCs then are

3.2 Policy preferences

We now have to check which of the possible constellations of policy tools is preferred by the agents. Let us begin by writing the government revenue constraint under the assumption that the educational expenditure ration $\overline{e}$ is paid for by the government:

where we dropped the arguments in $y^{t},$ $y^{t -1},$ $w_{\eta }^{1 ,t}$ and $w_{\eta }^{2 ,t -1}$ to avoid clutter. For future use, we write the public budget in per-capita terms and we express it in terms of $\tau _{\omega } (\tau _{\eta } ,\overline{e} ,\overline{d})$ :

where $\sigma =S/\left( n +S\right)$ and $\Psi =(1 -\mu ) \left( 2 \underline{y} +y^{t} +y^{t -1}\right)$ . Next, by deriving $\tau _{\omega } ( \cdot )$ with respect to $\tau _{\eta }$ , $\overline{e}$ , and $\overline{d}$ we obtain

Notice that here the production function is represented as affected by the education level of the parents , $y^{t}$ , and the grandparents , $y^{t -1}$ , while the possible increase in education prescribed by the policy would affect the earnings of the children . Similarly the current revenue of the entrepreneurs, $w_{\eta }^{1 ,t}$ and $w_{\eta }^{2 ,t -1}$ , is not affected by a change in $\overline{d}$ . This implies the following

By using ( 38 ), ( 37 ) can be re-written as

Let the indirect utility, written as a function of the policy instruments, be denoted by

where $\eta _{y}$ denotes a young entrepreneur and $\eta _{m}$ denotes a mature entrepreneur. The derivatives of ( 40 ) with respect to the policy instruments for the workers are

where again,

as far as the parents’ and grandparents’ income is concerned. Therefore, ( 42 ) and ( 43 ) can be re-written as

Regarding the entrepreneurs, we must distinguish between the young and the mature ones. For the young , the derivative of ( 40 ) with respect to the entrepreneur’s income tax rate obtains as

As to the derivatives with respect to the minimum expenditure on a child’s education, $\overline{e}$ , and the minimum amount of time a child must spend in school, $\overline{d}$ , we have

where we have considered that

because education affects only next-period profits. Notice that the per period entrepreneurs’ income is made of four terms – see ( 27 ) and ( 28 ). Since the entrepreneurs are not constrained, the compulsory education policy does not induce any change in returns to period two and three entrepreneurial activity $\left( 1 -\alpha \right) g$ , but, given ( 4 ), it creates more income via increases in per-worker profits $\pi ^{2 ,t}$ and $\left( 1 -\tau _{\eta }\right) \pi ^{3 ,t}$ . This means that we can be certain that

Consequently the sign of the derivatives of ( 47 ) is positive. In fact the policy measure has no impact on the amount of time and money invested in the education of an entrepreneur’s child. The increase in the compulsory components of e and d will be counterbalanced by a reduction of the same amount in the time and money used to top up the compulsory amounts. As a consequence the entrepreneurs will benefit from the increase of the education of their work-force without incurring in any distortion of their own educational choices.

The mature entrepreneurs will incur in the cost of education without obtaining any monetary return, but obtaining instead a benefit in terms of reputation. The reputational effect, therefore, is key to make them favour an educational policy, in that it makes them care, indirectly, for the workers’ children’s education one generation ahead. Qualitatively, this works just as if we assumed that the mature entrepreneurs had become altruistic (which, as we mentioned in fn. 14 would still be compatible with our results); the interpretation as an interest in the reputation of the firm is however more in line with our basic assumptions. While helpful, it is not absolutely necessary to obtain our main result (the interest in workers’ education of the young entrepreneurs would be enough), and it allows us to show the entrepreneurs as being consistently in support of mandatory education rather than moving away from that support in old age, which seems to sit comfortably with a view of the entrepreneur as having a long-term interest in the family business.

For them, the derivatives of ( 40 ) with respect to $\tau _{\eta }$ , $\overline{e}$ , and $\overline{d}$ obtain as

We are now in a position to calculate the preferred policy by each group. Specifically, the preferred policies can be found by using ( 34 ) to replace $\tau _{\omega }$ in ( 40 ) and then choosing $\tau _{\eta } ,~\overline{e}$ and $\overline{d}$ so as to maximise:

for the workers and the entrepreneurs, respectively, under non-negativity constraints for $\overline{e}$ and $\overline{d}$ and the constraints that

For the workers, the FOCs are:

implying that the optimal tax rate is $\tau _{\eta } =1$ while $\overline{e}$ and $\overline{d}$ should be optimally set to zero.

For the young entrepreneurs, the FOCs are:

The FOCs for the mature ones are instead:

We know from our previous analysis that in this case both $\partial V_{\eta _{y}}/ \partial \overline{e}$ and $\partial V_{\eta _{y}}/ \partial \overline{d}$ are positive because of a positive indirect effect as the compulsory education policy creates more income via increases in the after-tax per-worker next-period profits $\left( 1 -\tau _{\eta }\right) \pi ^{2 ,t}$ —see ( 47 )—and because of the positive reputational effect. The latter is also present in the case of the mature entrepreneurs.

Therefore, the entrepreneurs would prefer to face a zero marginal tax rate while at the same time having positive values for $\overline{e}$ and $\overline{d}$ (indeed, entrepreneurs would always favour pushing each ration to its upper limit). This implies that the workers should face a positive tax rate in order to finance education expenditure. The upper limit for $\overline{d}$ is clearly unity, while for $\overline{e}$ can be deduced from observing that, given the preferred tax rates, the maximum level of $\overline{e}$ can be achieved when $\tau _{\omega } (\tau _{\eta } ,\overline{e} ,\overline{d}) =1,$ implying $\overline{e} =(1 -\mu ) \left( 2 \underline{y} +y^{t} +y^{t -1}\right) \sigma$ .

While the results are possibly too sharp to be taken literally, their qualitative interpretation is clear: the workers do not perceive any benefit from compulsory education but would favour a redistributive income taxation, whereas entrepreneurs gain from compulsory education but would like to shift the entire cost on the workers.

4 Political equilibrium

Let us now focus on the voting process through which an educational policy package is chosen in the political arena. To perform our analysis, we consider a probabilistic voting model with a two-candidate electoral competition—see e.g. Lindbeck and Weibull ( 1987 ). In this setup, candidates are uncertain on whether citizens will participate in voting: they could abstain, maybe because they cannot clearly perceive the distance between the proposed platforms. Consequently, the candidates are uncertain on how citizens will vote for any given political proposal. Following a standard approach, we suppose that the voters’ decisions depend on the differences in the expected utilities from the candidates’ different platforms, and that the candidates perceive the probability that a voter will participate in voting and support a platform as a function of the distance between her own platform and that proposed by the rival candidate. Politicians are assumed to be opportunistic, i.e. they are purely office-motivated, and thus aim at maximising their vote share. No credibility issues may arise, because it is also assumed that politicians can make binding commitments to policy platforms proposed during the electoral campaign. Footnote 16

To sum up, the sketch of the electoral procedure is thus the following. Two candidates simultaneously propose their policy platforms, that is their educational policy packages plus their redistributive policy platform. Then, citizens vote for their preferred candidate. Finally, the elected candidate implements the policy she promised during the electoral campaign.

Each candidate selects her policy platform in order to maximise her share of total votes, that depends on the probabilities that each voter will vote for her, taking the rival candidate platform as given. Now, let the probability perceived by candidate $j ,~j =A ,B$ that an agent votes for her be $\gamma _{\iota }^{j} ,~\iota =\omega ,\eta _{y} ,\eta _{m}$ , where we distinguish between young and mature entrepreneurs because they have different policy preferences. Footnote 17 The expected vote share of a candidate will then be:

As usual, we posit

where $\Gamma _{\iota }$ is a smooth, continuous and increasing function varying between 0 and 1, and we use the superscript j , $j =A ,B$ , to denote a policy variable proposed by candidate j .

The assumption that agents will show up at elections with a certain positive probability is of course standard in probabilistic voting models; also standard is it to assume that this probability varies with the agent’s type and, more precisely, that each individual’s voting behaviour is affected by her own ideological attachment to a party (usually represented by an idiosyncratic taste shock which is a random variable with a density function taken to be symmetric around zero). However, we wish to highlight here a different mechanism, namely the positive relationship between income and voting participation: active participation in public life, including active voting, is indeed usually found to be positively related to income at the individual level and, relatedly, negatively associated with income inequality at the aggregate level—see for example Greene and Nikolaev ( 1999 ), Benabou ( 2000 ), and Horn ( 2011 ). Footnote 18

Therefore, we assume that the probability of an individual participating in voting is positively related to her income. In our framework, this means that the entrepreneurs are more active than workers in the voting process, i.e. their abstention probability is lower. We take it that $\Gamma _{w} ( \Delta V_{\iota }) <\Gamma _{\eta _{k}} ( \Delta V_{\iota })$ $k =y ,m,$ for any value of the difference in the utility from the two platforms.

Each candidate maximises ( 63 ) by choosing her own policy platform $\tau _{\eta }^{j} ,\overline{e}^{j} ,\overline{d}^{j}$ while taking the other candidate’s platform as given; in a Nash equilibrium in which the candidates announce their policies simultaneously, the resulting equilibrium policies will be identical. As is well-known, then, the objective function of a candidate, that is ( 63 ), in a probabilistic voting model coincides with a generalised utilitarian social welfare function—see Mueller ( 2003 ).

In what follows, we will assume that for the income tax rate proposed by candidate j for entrepreneurs, $\tau _{\eta }^{j}$ , we always have interior solutions at the political equilibrium. In other words we assume that the abstention rate of the workers (who outnumber the entrepreneurs) is such as to guarantee an interior solution. Footnote 19 As far as the education package is concerned, notice that there cannot exist an equilibrium in which both the workers and the entrepreneurs are constrained. If that were the case, one of the candidates could easily improve the outcome for both groups by simultaneously reducing the ration and the tax rates. For each candidate, the FOCs are:

where the derivatives of the indirect utility functions w.r.t. the policy parameters are given by ( 54 )–( 56 ) and ( 57 )–( 59 ).

Substituting for $\partial V_{\omega }/ \partial \tau _{\eta }^{j}$ and $\partial V_{\eta _{k}}/ \partial \tau _{\eta }^{j},$ $k =y ,m,$ from the preferred policies ( 54 )–( 56 ), condition ( 65 ) becomes:

In words, the marginal tax rates are set so as to equalise the marginal utilities of income weighted by the sensitivity of the two citizen types’ vote to the candidate’s proposal at the equilibrium point, Footnote 20 that is when there is no difference in the proposed platforms (see Mueller 2003 , ch. 12). Since the candidates’ proposed policies are identical at the equilibrium, $\tau _{\eta }^{A} =\tau _{\eta }^{B} =\tau _{\eta }$ , $\overline{e}^{A} =\overline{e}^{B} =\overline{e}$ , and $\overline{d}^{A} =\overline{d}^{B} =\overline{d}$ .

The intuition behind these results is the following. Let us suppose, for example, that $\partial \Gamma _{\eta _{k}}/ \partial V_{\eta _{k}},$ $k =y ,m,$ is, for any given value of the difference between the utilities in ( 64 ), larger than $\partial \Gamma _{\omega }/ \partial V_{\omega }$ , meaning that entrepreneurs respond with a higher increase in the probability of voting for the candidate if the latter marginally differentiates her proposed platform in their favour; then, $\tau _{\eta }$ will be set in such a way that the marginal utility of income for the entrepreneurs, $\lambda$ , is lower than the marginal utility of income for the workers, $v^{ \prime }$ . That is, the policy favours the citizen whom the candidate perceives as more likely to vote for her as a consequence of such a favour. Footnote 21

In ( 68 ) we consider interior solutions for $\tau _{\eta }.$ Notice, however, that the characteristics of the solution depend on the abstention rate of the workers. Considering that there are more workers than entrepreneurs, in general $\tau _{\omega }$ cannot be positive unless the workers’ abstention rate is particularly high even for large differences in the utility they can obtain from the two candidates’ platforms,

The educational policy must usually be paired with a redistributive taxation in favour of the workers because the latter suffer from a reduction in the household public good. This scenario can arise if the entrepreneurs’ benefits coming from the workers’ education are sufficiently high to compensate both the cost of the compulsory education package and the redistributive policy. Clearly, such a cost would be lower if the workers attached positive value to their children’s education. In that case, less redistribution would be needed for the workers to accept the compulsory education policy. If education were highly valued by the workers, the equilibrium policy could even prescribe positive values for $\tau _{\omega }$ .

When workers do not attach any value to their children’s education, substituting ( 55 ), ( 58 ), and ( 61 ) into condition ( 66 ) and ( 56 ), ( 59 ), and ( 62 ) into condition ( 67 ), the two conditions can be re-written as

Further, substituting ( 65 ), the above equations can be re-written as

On the l.h.s. of ( 72 ) we have a measure of the marginal benefit of educational expenditure, for the young and the mature entrepreneurs weighted by the respective vote sensitivities to the candidates’ proposals; on the RHS, we have the weighted marginal cost, expressed in utility terms for $\overline{e}$ . Similarly on the l.h.s. of ( 73 ) we have a measure of the weighted marginal benefit of school time while on the RHS we have the weighted marginal cost expressed as an opportunity cost for $\overline{d}.$

Then, as long as marginal benefits exceed or equal marginal costs, a solution in which a certain level of compulsory education is enforced emerges. We have then the interesting result that a compulsory education policy may be implemented at the political equilibrium, despite the fact that one of the two groups of which the society is composed would not educate the children in a free-market equilibrium. The driving force behind this result is the fact that the entrepreneurs gain from having an educated workforce.

The reputational effect plays a role in this respect, by making mature entrepreneurs care about future profits and thus value workers’ education, but it is by no means necessary to achieve our general result. In the absence of such effect (i.e. for $\beta =0$ ), the l.h.s. of ( 72 ) and ( 73 ) would be lower yielding lower equilibrium levels for $\overline{e}$ and $\overline{d}$ . The benefit of the policy would be enjoyed only by young entrepreneurs implying a milder policy in case the equilibrium exists and a lower probability of existence of an equilibrium with the above characteristics but the general conclusion would be unaffected.

5 Conclusions

Over the years, there have been several contributions to the political economy of education. However, their focus seems to have been mostly on secondary or tertiary education. Also, typically, the main driving force behind the results has been the presence of income dispersion. Consider for example, the work by Epple and Romano ( 1996b ). In their model, a publicly provided private good, which could be education, is financed through a flat-rate income tax and policy is determined by majority rule; agents differ by their fixed incomes. At the political equilibrium, the private good is publicly provided as long as it is possible to top it up; interestingly, for some preference configurations, the political equilibrium is of the “ends-against-the-middle” variety, i.e. low- and high-income agents favour low levels of public provision whereas the middle-income agents favour high levels of public provision (see also Epple and Romano 1996a ). Another well-established result is that post-compulsory education policies are at least partially regressive, redistributing income from the lower income groups to middle- and high income groups (see e.g. Fernandez and Rogerson 1995 ).

We have taken a different route here, paying attention specifically to the question whether education should be made compulsory or not. We considered an economy with two categories of agents: entrepreneurs and workers. The type of occupation, rather than the income dispersion, plays a crucial role in the analysis. In laissez-faire , the former gain from having their children educated, while the latter have no interest in sending their children to school. We characterised the preferred education policy-cum-redistributive taxation for the two groups, and find that entrepreneurs favour a compulsory education policy while workers prefer a purely redistributive taxation scheme (in both cases, the policy should preferably be financed entirely by the other group). Then, we introduced a political process with probabilistic voting and verified that an equilibrium with both a compulsory education policy and some redistribution may exist in which the workers are constrained but the entrepreneurs, who benefit from hiring educated workers, are not.

We should note that, on top of establishing a political economy rationale for compulsory schooling based on the intuition that due to a productivity reason entrepreneurs care for education more than workers, our model shows also that it must co-exist with a (limited) redistribution policy. In particular, the model allows to make the point that a certain amount of redistribution is needed to compensate the workers for the fact that they are forced to “over-educate” their kids. This kind of perspective on redistribution could only be achieved, we believe, within the structure of the present model.

To the best of our knowledge, the literature on this topic, at least if we consider the political economy line of work, is limited. Most papers follows different approaches from ours. As an example of these alternative views, consider the contribution by Gradstein ( 2000 ), whose elegant argument is based on the idea of time inconsistency. He argues that private financing of education can be an inferior public choice if the current government representing the parents is unable to pre-commit the next generation to a restrained redistributive policy. He observes that public education, relative to private education, generates a more equal income distribution for the children, and therefore suggests that in the future the government will have to implement a relatively moderate redistributive policy, as chosen by the median voter. This reduces the incentive to under-invest in the children’s education, incentive that instead would be large in case the parents expected a more aggressive redistribution policy. Thus, human capital should be accumulated at a faster pace under a public education regime, and this would make it preferable for a majority of parents to the alternative of a private education regime. Another interesting example of a paper in the same vein is Correa et al. ( 2020 ), where the political support for different education funding regimes in a one-person, one-vote system is studied. Free education, in which all pupils are treated equally (the same amount of resources is spent on each of them) turns out to be the Condorcet winner. This is because, in economies with some degree of income inequality, any other system concentrates the educational expenditure in some way, either favouring the richest families or those with the smartest kids, and therefore, lacks majority support. This provides a political economy explanation for the observation that governments tend to favor free education for all students (i.e., to spend the same amount on each student).

Clearly, ours is an entirely different line of reasoning, not in contradiction, but certainly based on other foundations and moreover focused specifically on whether education should be made compulsory or not, rather than on whether it should be financed by the State or not (which is of course a somewhat different issue). In our model, income disparity plays a part, in particular by supporting the assumption that entrepreneurs are not constrained by compulsory education, but what really drives our result on the desirability of compulsory education at the political equilibrium is the difference in occupation, i.e. the different role that education plays for the entrepreneurs as opposed to the workers because of the industrialization/productivity reason we have mentioned in the Introduction. Redistribution, however, by compensating workers for the loss of their children’s production, plays a role in that it makes workers accept the presence of compulsory education at the political equilibrium.

That there is a correlation between education and social and political participation is a well established result. In particular Dee ( 2004 ) and Milligan et al. ( 2004 ) point out a causal effect from education to participation in voting and civic engagement for the US.

According to Galor and Moav ( 2006 ), the productivity motive was also crucial to favour education reforms in the Western world during the process of the Industrial Revolution when a shift towards more skill-intensive production processes occurred. In particular, they provide evidence suggesting that, during the first phase of the Industrial Revolution, physical capital was the fundamental resource for economic growth while, during the second phase of the Industrial Revolution, the increasing importance of human capital in production induced the capitalist elite to support the provision of public education. Further support to such a view has been recently provided by Squicciarini ( 2020 ) for France during the Second Industrial Revolution. In particular, she shows how the type of primary education, and specifically, the introduction of a more technical curriculum was key for promoting a more skilled labour force, and thus for economic development.

Main actors may change depending on the historical period. For example, by focussing on the Industrial Revolution period, Galor and Moav ( 2006 ) and Galor et al. ( 2009 ) point out a different conflict of interests between two types of economic elite: the landowners who were interested in decreasing the mobility of the rural workers and thus were not in favour of their education, and the industrialists who instead needed educated workers and supported educational policies for the masses.

Our focus in the present paper will be on the compulsory nature of the system. As for its subsidisation, the literature on public finance points out the role that subsidies may play in remeding the distortion in individual educational decisions due to the introduction of income taxation (see e.g. Bovenberg and Jacobs 2005 ).

See Bourguignon and Verdier ( 2000 ) for a paper showing under which conditions a minority oligarchic group may have an incentive to subsidise the education of the poors who are the majority in the society, and thus to favour the emergence of a middle class as well as a democratic transition. On the other hand, Naito and Nishida ( 2017 ) distinguish between primary and higher education and show that different patterns may emerge, depending on the amount of human capital of the median voter. Higher education is supported only if the majority of individuals accumulate sufficient human capital. If this is the case, however, a relatively high amount of public resources may be directed to higher education resulting in persistent high income inequality because the poor do not enrol in university.

However, as we shall see, we assume that the probability of participation is lower for workers; therefore the historical case could be seen as a limiting one theoretically. Also, it is interesting to note that in several countries mandatory schooling and universal suffrage were simultaneously introduced (Brazil: 1988; South Korea: 1948; India: 1950).

This may be one of the reasons why the length of compulsory education is found to be a predictor of actual education some 40 years later when the choices of educated parents display their effect on their children’s education (Murtin and Viarengo 2011 ).

This assumption simplifies our analysis and allows us to focus on the productivity reason behind the political choice on a compulsory educational policy. Should the model be developed in a dynamic set-up, interclass mobility would be crucial to capture the emergence of a more complex social framework (e.g. growth of a middle class, shares in ownership of means of production by workers, etc.).

Alternatively, the kids could be employed in a form of market work—the logic of the model would be the same although there would be a further layer of complexity.

The assumption that both time and money are essential to obtain an education outcome is crucial for our analysis. In fact, it would be impossible that one could get educated devoting no time to such activity and using no resources. Complementarity between d and e , on the contrary, is not necessary to obtain our results but, in addition to being a reasonable assumption, it is technically convenient (it simplifies the analysis by ensuring that the agent’s problem is well-behaved). Given that both time and money are essential inputs however, we would obtain qualitatively analogous results in case d and e were either independent or substitute in the $y ( \cdot )$ function.

In other words, we assume that the marginal bargaining cost in equilibrium is higher than the profit obtainable by employing an additional worker.

This is of course just an innocuous simplification; the model works with any share of young to mature adults employed in each firm.

This can be interpreted as meaning that the bargaining costs of the worker are normalised to zero.

This is of course an extreme assumption, and we adopt it mainly because it simplifies the reasoning quite radically. It has to be remembered, however, that while the verdict on whether altruism or egoism prevails within a family is possibly still open, the assumption of egoism seems to be more robust to empirical scrutiny (see e.g. Cigno et al. 1998 , 2006 ). Moreover, our results would carry over to a setting with altruism, as long as the market equilibrium yields a less-than-optimal amount of acquired education, and Balestrino et al. ( 2017 ) show that even with full altruism there can be inefficiency in the provision of education due to comparative advantage issues.

The model cannot be applied to the case of a single income tax rate, because, as we shall see, the key mechanism driving the agents’ policy preferences is the desire of each group to shift the tax burden on the other group while retaining the benefit of the public expenditure. However, the case we consider here is more relevant, we believe, because, as the gross incomes of the two groups are different (see ( 9 )), it becomes a rough representation of a two-bracket income tax system - therefore, it approximates more closely real-world tax systems.

Notice that, since politicians are office- rather than policy-motivated, it does not matter whether they are workers or entrepreneurs. It would of course matter if we were to take the route of the so-called citizen-candidate models - see e. g. Osborne and Slivinski ( 1996 ) and Besley and Coate ( 1997 ).

We assume that the probability of voting is the same within each social group. The model could be extended to the case where the probability varies within each group for example because of an individual bias towards one of the candidates. If we adhere to the common assumption that biases are uniformely distributed, then the formal structure of our model continues to hold (see fn. 21).

Political economy models in line with this literature include Anderberg and Balestrino ( 2007 ), where the probability of abstension has been linked to the level of income, and Bourguignon and Verdier ( 2000 ), where the turnout in elections is determined by the level of education.

Corner solutions with $\tau _{\eta }^{j} =1,$ $\tau _{\omega }^{j} <0$ are implausible in a democracy (as well as those with $\tau _{\eta }^{j} =0,$ $\tau _{\omega }^{j} >0$ ).

Notice, however, that for the entrepreneurs the term in square bracket is the average of the sensitivity of the young and the mature ones.

In the case where the voting probability varies within each social group because of a uniformly distributed individual bias towards one of the candidates, the sensitivity $\partial \Gamma _{\iota }/ \partial V_{\iota }$ represents the height of the distribution. Such height will be higher, the lower is the range over which the bias is distributed. Consequently, the sensitivity is higher the more concentrated is the distribution, implying that the policy will favour the group whose probability of voting is less dispersed (see Mueller 2003 , ch. 12).

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Balestrino, A., Grazzini, L. & Luporini, A. On the political economy of compulsory education. J Econ 134 , 1–25 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00712-021-00735-x

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Right to Education under the Constitution

This article is written by Tanya Singh, a 1st year student of Amity University, Chhattisgarh

Education is a fundamental human right and essential for the exercise of all other human rights. It promotes individual freedom and empowerment and yields important development benefits. Yet millions of children and adults remain deprived of educational opportunities, many as a result of poverty.

Normative instruments of the United Nations and UNESCO lay down international legal obligations for the right to education. These instruments promote and develop the right of every person to enjoy access to education of good quality, without discrimination or exclusion. These instruments bear witness to the great importance that Member States and the international community attach to normative action for realizing the right to education. It is for governments to fulfill their obligations both legal and political in regard to providing education for all of good quality and to implement and monitor more effectively education strategies.

Education is a powerful tool by which economically and socially marginalized adults and children can lift themselves out of poverty and participate fully as citizens.

The right to education is a universal entitlement to education. This is recognized in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as a human right that includes the right to free, compulsory primary education for all, an obligation to develop secondary education accessible to all, in particular by the progressive introduction of free secondary education, as well as an obligation to develop equitable access to higher education, ideally by the progressive introduction of free higher education.

The right to education also includes a responsibility to provide basic education for individuals who have not completed primary education. In addition to these access to education provisions, the right to education encompasses the obligation to rule out discrimination at all levels of the educational system, to set minimum standards and to improve the quality of education.

THE PROMINENT ORGANIZATIONS AROUND THE WORLD STRIVING FOR PROMOTION OF RIGHT TO EDUCATION ARE:

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
United Nation Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
International Labour Organization (ILO)

CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS:

The Constitution of India has provisions to ensure that the State provides education to all its citizens. Right to education is the only right which finds its place in three parts of our Constitution- Fundamental Rights, Directive Principles of State Policy and Fundamental Duties. The three articles in all these three above mentioned parts were added by The Constitution (Eighty Sixth) Amendment Act, 2002.

The 86th amendment added Article 21-A, a fundamental right which says that- ‘The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of six to fourteen years in such manner as the State may, by law, determine’.

Article 45 earlier read as ‘The State shall endeavor to provide, within a period of ten years from the commencement of this Constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years’ which is now substituted by the following- ‘The State shall endeavor to provide early childhood care and education for all children until they complete the age of six years.’ The amendment of 2002 also added a clause in the fundamental duties.

Article 51-A clause (k) was added- ‘(k) who is a parent or guardian to provide opportunities for education to his child or, as the case may be, ward between the age of six and fourteen years.’

RIGHT TO EDUCATION ACT:

The Constitution of India has originally defined education as a state subject. However under Article 42, an amendment was added in 1976 which made education a subject of the concurrent list. This enables the central government to legislate on matters related to education in the manner suited to it. Nearly eight years after the Constitution was amended by the 86th amendment act to make education a fundamental right, the government of India implemented the law to provide free and compulsory education to all children in age group of 6-14 years from 1st April 2010.

‘The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act’ or ‘Right to Education Act’ is an Act of the Parliament of India which was enacted on 4 August 2009. It describes the procedures and also explains the importance of free and compulsory education for children between the ages of 6 and 14 years in India under Article 21 A of the Indian Constitution. This Act makes it a right of every child to get education. The Act makes it obligatory for the respective governments to ensure that every child between the ages of 6-14 years gets free elementary education. The Act authorizes that even private educational institutions have to reserve 25 per cent seats for the children from weaker sections. The government’s estimate found out there will be a requirement of Rs 1.71 lakh crores in the next five years for implementation of the Act.

The Act also lays down that no school can deny admission to a student and all schools are required to have well trained and experiences teachers. In case of those schools which are not having trained teachers, they will have to comply with this provision within three years. The schools should also have certain minimum facilities to help in providing a good learning atmosphere to the children. Basic minimum facilities such as adequate teachers, playground and infrastructure should be there. The government will evolve some mechanism to help marginalized schools to comply with the provisions of the Act. The government had prepared and arranged for model rules which have been circulated to the states for preparing their own rules in order to provide for the implementation of the Act. The Center had also prepared separate rules for the Union Territories.

However, the reservation for weaker section was not be implemented from the year of implementation as the admission season was almost over. It was implemented from 2011-12. The state government and local authorities were directed to establish primary schools within walking distance of one km of the neighborhood. In the cases of children studying in class VI to VIII, the children’s school should be within a walking distance of three km of the neighborhood.

CONCLUSION:

Though Right to Education Act makes the constitutional right of free education legal, this act is evidently silent on increasing the State outlay for Government schooling. Instead, it shifts the responsibility of ‘poor students’ to private schools which is evident by the 25 per cent reservation clause. The reservation in private institutions has already raised many objections in the past. Instead of the reasonable and unbiased education based on mutual dignity that the Amendment clearly lays down, such a provision shuts out the poor as a class and further deepens class barriers which already exist in our society. Also, following on the lines of the Constitutional Amendment, the Act limits its ambit to children between the ages of 6 and 14 years.

One important point of consideration is also that giving education to children up to class 8th is hardly sufficient to either prepare a child with the basic skills required and important for gainful employment or even to make an individual equipped to function with a basic degree of self- sufficiency and empowerment in this world full of competition.

After all, this is the right to education Act and not the right to literacy and numeracy alone. Education is much more than mere literacy and it aims at the full all round development of an individual. Low standards of education are being provided and offered to all children by limiting the provision of free education only between students of classes 1 to 8. It is a decision that affects and impacts the poorest section of the society badly. The selection of the 6-14 age groups may be called arbitrary and it somewhat does not do justice to the country’s promise to its children of making education available, accessible and acceptable.

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Why early childhood care and education matters

The right to education begins at birth.

But new UNESCO data shows that 1 out of 4 children aged 5 have never had any form of pre-primary education. This represents 35 million out of 137 million 5-year-old children worldwide. Despite research that proves the benefits of early childhood care and education (ECCE), only half of all countries guarantee free pre-primary education around the world.

UNESCO’s World Conference on Early Childhood Care and Education taking place in Tashkent, Uzbekistan on 14-16 November 2022 will reaffirm every young child’s right to quality care and education, and call for increased investment in children during the period from birth to eight years.

Here’s what you need to know what early childhood care and education.

Why is early childhood care and education important?

The period from birth to eight years old is one of remarkable brain development for children and represents a crucial window of opportunity for education. When children are healthy, safe and learning well in their early years, they are better able to reach their full developmental potential as adults and participate effectively in economic, social, and civic life. Providing ECCE is regarded as a means of promoting equity and social justice, inclusive economic growth and advancing sustainable development.

A range of research and evidence has converged to support this claim. First, neuroscience has shown that the environment affects the nature of brain architecture – the child’s early experiences can provide either a strong or a fragile foundation for later learning, development and behaviours. Second, the larger economic returns on investment in prior-to-school programmes than in programmes for adolescents and adults has been demonstrated. Third, educational sciences have revealed that participation in early childhood care and education programmes boosts children’s school readiness and reduces the gap between socially advantaged and disadvantaged children at the starting gate of school.

From a human rights perspective, expanding quality early learning is an important means for realizing the right to education within a lifelong learning perspective. ECCE provides a significant preparation to basic education and a lifelong learning journey. In 2021, only 22% of United Nations Member States have made pre-primary education compulsory, and only 45% provide at least one year of free pre-primary education. Only 46 countries have adopted free and compulsory pre-primary education in their laws.

How has access to ECCE evolved?

Overall, there has been significant global progress in achieving inclusive and high-quality ECCE. Globally, the ratio for pre-primary education has increased from 46% in 2010 to 61% in 2020. The global ratio for participation in organized learning one year before the official primary school entry age also increased to reach 75% in 2020. However, in low- and lower-middle-income countries, fewer than two in three children attend organized learning one year before the official primary entry age. Furthermore, the proportion of children receiving a positive and stimulating home environment remains significantly low with only 64% of children having positive and nurturing home environments. Great regional disparities remain the biggest challenges. In sub-Saharan Africa, only 40% of children have experienced a positive and stimulating home learning environment compared to 90% of children in Europe and Northern America.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted ECCE?

The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating effect on ECCE and amplified its crisis. Young children have been deemed the greatest victims of the pandemic, experiencing the impact of on their immediate families, and because of stay-at-home orders of lockdowns, having been deprived of essential services to promote their health, learning and psychosocial well-being. Some children will start basic education without organized learning experiences to the detriment of their readiness for school. It was estimated that the closure of ECCE services has resulted in 19 billion person-days of ECCE instruction lost with 10.75 million children not being able to reach their developmental potential in the first 11 months of the pandemic.

What are the consequences on foundational learning?

ECCE is a pre-requisite for meeting the right to learn and to develop. In particular, access to pre-primary education is a basis for acquiring foundational learning including literacy, numeracy and socio-emotional learning. Yet, according to the recent estimate, about 64% of children in low- and middle-income countries cannot read and understand a simple story at age 10. The roots of this learning poverty start in ECCE and its lack of capacity to make children ready for school.

What is the situation regarding ECCE teachers and care staff?

As the calls grow for higher quality ECCE provision, teacher shortages and quality has received increasing attention. The number of teachers who received at least the minimum pedagogical teacher training, both pre-service and in-service, increased from 68% to 80% between 2010 and 2020. It is estimated that ECCE services need another 9.3 million full-time teachers to achieve the SDG target . Most Member States have established qualification requirements for ECCE teachers, while far less attention has been focused on ECCE teachers’ working conditions and career progression. The low social status, poor salaries and job insecurity of ECCE teachers and care staff tend to have an adverse impact on attracting and retaining suitably qualified early childhood educators.

What are the policies, governance and financing implications?

It is time for societies and governments to implement relevant policies to recover and transform their ECCE systems. ECCE is seen by many countries as a key part of the solution to a myriad of challenges including social inclusion and cohesion, economic growth and to tackle other sustainable development challenges. According to the 2022 Global Education Monitoring Report, 150 out of 209 countries have set targets for pre-primary education participation by 2025 or 2030. The proportion of countries that monitor participation rates in pre-primary education is expected to increase from 75% in 2015 to 92% in 2025 and 95% in 2030. It is expected that the pre-primary participation rate for all regions will exceed 90% by 2030. In Central and South Asia, East and South-East Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean, participation rates are expected to be nearly 100%. At the same time, it is projected that participation rates in Northern Africa and Western Asia will be about 77% by 2030.

What are the obstacles to ensuring access to quality ECCE?

Policy fragmentation: In many countries, ECCE policies and services are fragmented and do not leverage whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches to addressing the holistic needs and rights of families and their young children. This is particularly challenging for national governments with limited resources, low institutional capacities and weak governance.
Lack of public provision : Non-state provision of ECCE continues to grow in many contexts, and the role of non-state actors in influencing policy development and implementation is evident. Non-state actors provide a large proportion of places in pre-primary education. In 2000, 28.5% of pre-primary aged children were enrolled in private institutions, and this rose to 37% in 2019, a figure higher than for primary (19%) or secondary (27%) education.
Insufficient regulation of the sector : Specific regulations and standards for ECCE are not in place in most countries. Regulations usually do not establish quality assurance mechanisms and those that do, tend not to focus on outcomes.
Chronic underfunding : An average of 6.6% of education budgets at national and subnational levels were allocated to pre-primary education. Low-income countries, on average, invest 2% of education budgets in pre-primary education, which is far below the target of 10% by 2030 suggested by UNICEF. In terms of international aid, pre-primary education remains the least funded sector.

What are the solutions?

Political will and ownership are key to transforming ECCE. UNESCO’s review highlights progress in some countries, giving an indication of what is required to successfully strengthen the capacity of ECCE systems:

Expanding and diversifying access : Increasing investment and establishing a legal framework to expand ECCE services are essential steps. Innovative ECCE delivery mechanisms such as mobile kindergartens with teachers, equipment for learning and play, have been deployed in some countries to reach remote areas and provide children with pre-primary education.
Enhancing quality and relevance : ECCE curriculum frameworks should cover different aspects of early learning and prepare children with essential knowledge, skills, and dispositions to transit smoothly to formal education.
Making ECCE educators and caregivers a transforming force : For the transformation of ECCE to take place, ECCE educators need to be adequately supported and empowered to play their part.
Improving governance and stakeholder participation : Countries have adopted different modes of governance. There are generally two systems that are followed, an integrated system and a split system.
Using funding to steer ECCE development : Strengthening domestic public financing is important for providing affordable ECCE. Since ECCE services are offered by different ministries, there must be a clear demarcation of funding and financing rules for different sectors and different ministries. Innovative financing may include earmarking resources from economic activities and other sources.
Establishing systems for monitoring and assessing whole-of-child development . System-level action in strengthening the availability and reliability of data obtained from assessments enables efficient and timely monitoring of programmes and child developmental milestones.
Galvanize international cooperation and solidarity . The World Conference on Early Childhood Care and Education is an opportunity to mobilize existing global, regional, and national networks to increase focus on identifying and sharing innovations, policies and practices.

More on this subject

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In addition, it advocates for and promotes the right to education through communication actions as well as research and studies on specific components of this right such as on pre-primary education, higher education, and digital learning .
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100 Words Essay On The Right To Education In English. The Right to Education Act of India is defined as follows: "The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act or Right to Education Act (RTE), is an Act of the Parliament of India enacted on 4 August 2009, which describes the modalities of the importance of free and compulsory ...
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PSEB Punjab Board Class 10 Model Test Papers 2025: Download FREE PDF
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