The right to education has become the single most important agenda in the context of India`s development today, and this book addresses the issues that characterise the crisis in elementary education in the country. Bringing together diverse perspectives and analyses from scholars, activists and administrators, this volume covers issues of -policy-legal obligations-economic implications-gender-inclusive educationIntroducing the readers to the flavour of the most significant debates in education, this volume will provide educationists, social scientists and policy makers a gamut of analyses on diverse themes of elementary education at one place.

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.

This volume discusses key aspects of the economics of the elementary education system in the poorer and educationally backward states of India, while also examining one high-achiever state--Tamil Nadu. Providing the first state-by-state analysis of major cost and financing issues, the book is based on data gathered from one of the most comprehensive surveys conducted in recent times in these states, which was specifically commissioned for this book. The survey covered 120,000 households and a thousand schools spread over 91 districts in eight states.Written by leading educational economists, the original essays in this volume- analyse the major cost and financing issues in elementary schooling in seven of the eight states surveyed--Assam, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal;- identify recent initiatives made by the governments of these seven states;- systematically scrutinise the pattern of the public spending in elementary education;- examine enrolment in government schools and the quality of education that they impart;- study household expenditure on schooling--the costs to parents of sending children to school; and- compare government schools with private schools, showing how the private sector has began to take over the what should be the responsibility of the government, particularly in the poorer states.

The right to education is the single most important development agenda in India today. This volume elaborates on the issues that characterize the crisis in elementary education. Bringing together diverse perspectives and analyses from academics, activists, and administrators, the articles in this volume cover basic issues of Policy Legal obligation Economic implications Gender Inclusive??education Introducing the readers to the flavor of various debates in education, this volume will provide educationists, social scientists and policy makers a gamut of analyses on diverse themes of elementary education at one place.

Education specially at the primary level,contributes to a great extent to the physical,mental,emotional,social and spiritual growth of the child.Primary education promotes the sikls,knowlege,attitudes and habits.This book question the reasons behind non-universalization of primary education in India.Rampant child labour and poverty are the two most commonly cited resons in Inidia,which did not deter some of the other developing countres from making primary education compulsory.

This book focuses on the failure of elementary education since Independence, which is usually seen as the result of simplified phrases like 'lack of political will', 'because of poverty', etc. This book looks at the system as a whole: infrastructure, quality of teaching, privatisation, nutritional incentives, curriculum. It contains samples from two states namely Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh.

The success of the primary education system has a direct bearing on the upper primary, non-formal and adult and continuing education sectors; an efficient primary education system is expected to contribute significantly to total literacy: an appropriate rise in literacy levels improves the functioning of other systems of education. Effective delivery of primary education contributes to bettering India's HDI (Human Development Index), including our standing in the Human Development Index evolved by UNDP. This volume is a study of the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) in one of the states of South India. It is a piece of policy evaluation research expected to contribute to the ongoing discussion of policy processes in primary schools. It specifically questions to what extent objectives such as access, retention, quality and equality are achieved by the implementation of the DPEP. Figures from before and after the implementation of the DPEP show a significant increase in enrolment levels in primary schools all over the state. Thus, the major impact of DPEP implementation is seen in enhanced access to primary schools. The study shows that the DPEP implementation succeeded in attaining the objective of equality. This can be observed from gender equality in dropout rates at various primary grades. The DPEP seems to have achieved only moderate success in meeting the objective of retention of students. The DPEP does not seem to have approached the quality objective very seriously.