Education is a privilege rather than a right for the children of India. There are schools available to the wealthy, but the majority of Indian children live in poverty and are not given this opportunity. Although many children are enrolled in school, actual attendance is low. Many children can only attend school when they are not working. Therefore, lower-class Indian children's education is neither consistent nor secure. School teachers are typically landowners who tend to their land before focusing on their students' learning needs. Corruption in schools is another major problem. Headmasters who run the schools sometimes demand bribes which poor parents are unable to give.

One quarter of all rural children will never see the inside of a classroom. In India, parents see children as an extra pair of hands with earning power. For example, if a farmer has four children and needs help on the farm, it is unlikely that he or she will send all of them to school: only 62% of children reach grade five in their education. This statistic is also indicative of India's patriarchal social structure, which places more value on the male child. Therefore, if a family does have enough money for educating its children, available funds will be allotted to the male children to go to school first. The female children, instead, will be expected to stay home and help with household chores and with raising their siblings. Once girls reach age nine, their parents see them as economic resources and send them to work for wages either in or out of the home

The diversity between what is expected of female versus male children is apparent in their school enrollment. Teaching females to read is not common; the national female literacy rate is far lower than that of males. Research shows that the higher the literacy rates, the lower the incidence of child labor. Children of higher castes are more educated because they do not need to work to help support their families, and their families can afford to send them to school. Since male children are granted the opportunity of an education more often than females, they have a greater opportunity to act independently of social constraints in their lives. One reason that parents deny education to their daughters can be linked to the Indian tradition of giving a dowry at the time of marriage. Thus, a girl is seen as a burden in comparison with her brothers, and therefore she needs to work to save money for the dowry. Most girls get married in their early to mid-teens, while boys are expected to finish school, and then marry in their twenties.

India's high levels of poverty also prevents children from getting an education. Often any money that poor families have is used for food and survival. Although there are government schools, such as those run by the Universal Primary Education Program, they are few of them. Also, admission into these schools is not always an equal opportunity.