School education development index: A meta-frontier range directional measure benefit-of-the-doubt model

While the imperative of gauging school education development across regions is widely acknowledged, a scarcity of methodologically robust measures to quantify it persists. This paper introduces an innovative non-parametric framework for constructing an all-inclusive school education development index (SEDI) across regional entities. The proposed framework, termed “meta-RDM-BoD”, seamlessly integrates three distinct yet interconnected non-parametric efficiency modeling approaches: the range directional measure (RDM) proposed by Portela et al. (2004) [5], the meta-frontier analysis developed by O'Donnell et al. (2008) [6], and the benefit-of-the-doubt (BoD) technique put forth by Melyn and Moesen (1991) [7]. Notably, the proposed framework adeptly handles both desirable and undesirable indicators, accommodates indicators with negative and zero values without compromising the properties of translation and unit invariance, and effectively accounts for underlying heterogeneity across regional entities. To illustrate the efficacy of the SEDI, we provide a compelling example using data on 36 school education indicators for Indian states and union territories in 2021–2022. These indicators cover five crucial dimensions of school education: access to school, school infrastructure and facilities, teacher quality, school outcomes, and equity in education. The results reveal spatial gaps in school education development, offering valuable insights for benchmarking, ranking, and classifying regional entities.