Working Paper No.: WP 157 - Chronic Absenteeism and its Impact on

In order to understand whether the number of schools days missed causes any differences in the learning outcomes of students, the absence rate of the students has been further classified into the following categories: ‘no absence’; ‘absence of up to 2 days in a month’ which is termed in this paper as ‘normal absence’, ‘absence of 3-5 days in a month’, and ‘absence of 6 days and above in a month’. [...] 4.2 Incidence of Chronic Absence in India Figure 3 indicates that out of the total number of students enrolled in the age group of 8-11 years at the primary level in India, about 22.6 per cent were chronically absent from schools on the survey date, which was higher than the chronic absence rate of 16.4 per cent recorded in 2004-2005. [...] Among all stages of absence, the proportion of students with ‘satisfactory skills’ was the lowest in the case of chronic absence situations, followed by those in the bracket of ‘3-5 days of absence’ in a month. [...] This figure suggests that with an increase in school distance, a) the likelihood of the child’s chronic absence also increases in both types of schools across regions; b) the chances of such absence are higher in rural areas for both types of schools than in urban areas (much higher in government schools); and c) the gap in likelihood of chronic absence widens between government and private school. [...] In the case of government schools, the lower probability of chronic absence in urban than in rural areas could be due to the impact of the government’s largest run Mid-Day Meal Programme, which seems to be more effective in retaining students in classrooms in urban areas as compared to rural areas.