Working Paper: NBER ID: w27377
Authors: Chirantan Chatterjee; Eric A. Hanushek; Shreekanth Mahendiran
Abstract: India moved to a constitutional guarantee of universal basic education with the Right to Education (RTE) Act in 2009 that called for full access of children aged 6-14 to free schooling. This paper considers the offsetting effects from induced expansion of private tutoring that limited gains in educational equity from RTE. We develop a unique database of registrations of new private educational institutions offering tutorial services by local district between 2001-2015. We estimate the causal impact of RTE on private supplemental education by comparing the growth of tutorial institutions in highly competitive educational markets to that in less competitive educational markets. We find a strong impact of RTE on the private tutoring market and show that this holds across alternative definitions of highly competitive districts and a variety of robustness checks, sensitivity analyses, and controls. Finally, we provide descriptive evidence that these private tutoring schools do increase the achievement (and competitiveness) of students able to afford them.
Keywords: Right to Education; Private Tutoring; Educational Equity; India
JEL Codes: H4; I25
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| RTE Act (I20) | increase in private tutoring centers (I21) |
| high educational competition (I23) | increase in private tutoring centers (I21) |
| RTE Act (I20) | positive contribution to student achievement (I24) |
| increase in private tutoring centers (I21) | positive contribution to student achievement (I24) |