Question: Consider the following statements with respect to “Household Social Consumption: Education”:
(1) Report is released by the National Statistical Office (NSO) report.
(2) The rural-urban gap remains significant in literacy, accessibility to schools and household expenditure on education.
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) None of these
Answer:(c)
- Context:
- The National Statistical Office (NSO) released a report on “Household Social Consumption: Education” in which it surveyed 1.13 lakh households spread across over 8,000 villages and 6,000 urban blocks between July 2017 and June 2018.
- Key Findings:
- The rural-urban gap remains significant in literacy, accessibility to schools and household expenditure on education.
- On Accessibility to schools,7% of the rural households have a primary school within 1 km as compared to 87.2% in urban areas. But only 38% of the rural household have access to secondary school as compared to 70% in the urban areas on similar parameters.
- The all India literacy rate among persons aged 7 years and above is 77.7%. However, for the same age group, the rural literacy is 73.5% and in the urban areas it is 87.7%.
- There is a digital divide, too, with just 4% of the rural households having access to computers as compared to 23% in urban areas. While 15% surveyed population in the rural cluster has internet access, 42% of the surveyed students in the urban areas have access to the internet.
- Annual average expenditure per student at secondary and senior secondary level in a rural household stands at Rs 5,856 and Rs 9,148 respectively. An urban household for the same classes spends Rs 17,518 and Rs 23,832 respectively.
- Around 76% of the rural children are attending primary and middle school run by the government, while only 38% of the urban children are attending government schools and instead prefer private schools.
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