Routledge Handbook of Education in India Debates, Practices, and Policies

This comprehensive handbook introduces the reader to the education system in India in terms of its structural features, its relations with society and culture, and the debates that have shaped present-day policy ethos. Expert scholars provide a lucid analysis of complex themes such as the equal distribution of educational opportunities, legal provisions shaping the opportunity structure, and curricular issues in major areas of knowledge. The volume provides a general overview of India?s education system and examines key and current issues that face higher and school education, the examination system, disciplines of social sciences, curriculum, teachers, law, coaching and unemployment.

This handbook will serve as a valuable resource and guide to anyone seeking authentic information about India?s contemporary educational challenges in relation to its society, economy and politics. It will be useful to scholars and researchers of education, public policy and administration, sociology and political studies as well as practitioners, think-tanks, those in media, government and NGOs.

List of figures. List of tables. Contributors. Preface. Introduction Part I: Logic of Access 1. Compulsion to Educate 2. Education in Urban Areas 3. Institutional Diversity and Quality 4. Examination for Elimination: Celebrating Fear and Penalising Failure Part II: Curriculum and Teaching 5. Mind the (Language-Medium) Gap 6. Science and Mathematics Teaching in Schools and Colleges 7. The Teaching of Social Sciences in Schools and Colleges in India 8. The Uses and Teaching of History 9. An Experiment in Rural Education: The Revival of Anand Niketan Part III: Training for Professions 10. The Making of India as an Engineering Society 11. Discourse of Teacher Training in India 12. Management Education in India: How far have we come? Part IV: Universities and Society 13. Indian Higher Education: 21st-Century Challenges 14. Gendered Access and Participation: Unequal subject choices in Indian Higher Education 15. Caste Quotas and Formal Inclusion in Indian Higher Education 16. Tribes and Higher Education in India Part V: Underbelly 17. Active Partners: Rethinking the Educated Unemployed in India 18. Access, Success and Excess: Debating Shadow Education in India 19. Understanding Vyapam. Index

Krishna Kumar is former Professor of Education, University of Delhi and former Director, National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), India.