What India's Classrooms Tell Us — Literacy & Gender Gap, 2015-16

Big picture first

Some states are far ahead of others

The country-wide average hides a huge difference. In Kerala, almost everyone can read and write. In Bihar, nearly 1 in 3 people can't. Hover over any bar to see the exact number — the 3 best and 3 worst states are colored so they stand out.

93.9%

Kerala — the best

63.8%

Bihar — the lowest

~30 pts

the gap between them

Source: 2011 Census figures, reported in the 2015-16 government school survey · the dotted line is the national average

Boys vs. girls

In every single state, boys are ahead of girls

This chart compares literacy for boys (blue) and girls (pink) in each state. In every state, boys score higher — the only question is by how much. In Rajasthan, the gap is the biggest in the country: almost 28 points. Hover over the dots to compare a state's boys and girls directly.

States are sorted from smallest gap to biggest · the 3 widest gaps are labeled

Rajasthan, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh have the biggest gaps between boys and girls — more than double the gap seen in states like Meghalaya or Mizoram.

Connecting the dots

The more literate a state is, the smaller its boy-girl gap tends to be

Here, each dot is one state. States further to the right have higher overall literacy. States lower down have a smaller gap between boys and girls. The pattern is clear: better overall literacy usually comes with a smaller gap — these two problems seem to move together, not separately.

Each dot is one state · the red line shows the overall pattern

This is a strong pattern (measured as −0.74 on a scale from −1 to 1, where numbers closer to −1 or 1 mean a stronger link). In plain terms: raising overall literacy and closing the gender gap look like the same fight, not two separate ones.

Testing a common assumption

Bigger classrooms don't clearly mean worse exam results

It seems obvious: more students per teacher should mean worse exam scores. This data says that's not really true. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have the most crowded classrooms in the country, but their pass rates land right in the middle of the pack — not at the bottom.

Each dot is one state · the flat line shows there's basically no pattern here

This measured at almost 0 (−0.13 on the same −1 to 1 scale) — in plain terms, barely any link at all. It would have been easy to quietly drop this chart when it didn't confirm the expected story. It's shown here anyway: finding out that a popular assumption doesn't hold up is just as useful as confirming one that does, especially before spending a real budget on it.

Putting it all together

Which states show up in more than one problem area?

Each circle below is one problem: below-average literacy, a bigger-than-average boy-girl gap, and more crowded classrooms than average. A state can land in more than one circle at once. Click any region to see which states are in it — the middle, where all three overlap, is where several problems are stacked on top of each other.

Based on this dataset's own averages · click a region, or one of the labels below it, to see the state list

What this data can't tell us

Being upfront about the limits

This is one snapshot in time (2015-16), not a multi-year trend — it shows how things looked, not how they're changing.
Telangana isn't included — it split off from Andhra Pradesh in 2014, and its literacy numbers weren't reported separately yet in this data. Left out on purpose, not filled in with a guess.
Delhi's exam pass rate is shown as missing, not zero — the records show no students appeared for that exam that year, which isn't the same as everyone failing.
35 of India's 36 states and union territories are included, after cleaning up a real government file with over 600 columns.

What's next Pulling newer government data to show a real multi-year trend, breaking results down by district, and building a small interactive tool to explore the data.