Elementary Education in India: Policy Shifts, Issues and Challenges [Hardcover]

This book examines the policy shifts over the past three decades in the Indian education system. It explores how these shifts have unequivocally established the domination of neoliberal capital in the context of elementary education in India.

The chapters in the volume:

Discuss a range of elementary education policies and programs in India with a focus on the policy development in recent decades of neoliberalism.

 Analyse policy from diverse perspectives and varied vantage points by scholars, activists, and practitioners, illustrated with contemporary statistics.

Introduce the key curriculum, assessment, and learning debates from contemporary educational discourse.

Integrate the tools and methods of education policy analysis with basic concepts in education, like equality, quantity, equity, quality, and inclusion.

A definitive inter-disciplinary work on a key sector in India, this volume will be essential for scholars and researchers of education, public policy, sociology, politics, and South Asian studies.

Introduction Part I: The Neoliberal Restructuring of Education 1. Understanding Neoliberal Policy Shifts in Elementary Education in India 2. Governance, Quality, and Accountability 3. Extending the Neoliberal Agenda to a Forbidden Territory: Public-Private Partnership in School Education in India 4. Education Policies in Conflict with the Freedom Movements Educational Vision 5. Public Education: Can it be fixed? Part II: Schooling, Social Justice, and Critical Pedagogy