Quality, equity, and scale in the Indian School Education System: Large-scale policy reforms

Abstract

The Indian school system is the largest in the world, with 1.5 million schools and 9.4 million teachers catering to 260 million students. While reforms since the 1990s have successfully expanded schooling to historically marginalized groups, they have been far less successful in retaining them past the primary level. This paper analyses the conceptions of equity and quality that have informed a raft of policies and state reform efforts in India over the past two decades through the ambitious school curriculum reform efforts of the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (2005), the subsequent framework for Teacher Education (2009), Right to Education Act (2009) (RTE), the integrated scheme for school and teacher education, and the current National Education Policy (2020). We examine databases on school enrolment, sample-based national assessment surveys, and central teacher eligibility tests to interpret the RTE, using principles of inclusive education in terms of policies, practices, and support structures that enable the presence, participation, and achievement of all students, including from marginalized sections of society. The paper concludes with a reflection on where the country is poised concerning quality, equity, and inclusion in India and the future directions it could take.