Education

In June 2021, Google and BYJU’s announced a partnership to provide education services in India. By offering education content gratis and supporting “personalised learning,” Google and BYJU’s see themselves as facilitating the transition from the traditional brick-and-mortar classroom to a virtual learning space, potentially benefiting millions of Indian students during and beyond the pandemic. Examining the implications of this tie-up, in the context of commercialisation of education and the increasing concentration of power with monopolistic corporations, it is argued that private platforms in the unregulated edtech sector are incentivised to prioritise growth above all else and their programmes are sharply opposed to the socially transformative aims of education.

Schooling of migrant children in India is compromised for various reasons, such as their mobility, disadvantaged backgrounds, and exclusionary experiences of schooling. Such contexts and experiences of migrant families and children are in stark contrast to how their aspirations and motivation are dominantly imagined by education functionaries of the state and the non-governmental organisations. Using narratives from the city of Bengaluru, this article throws light on the aforesaid discord, thereby highlighting the complex placement of migrant children with respect to inclusionary frameworks of schooling and education in India.

The National Education Policy of India 2020 is a significant policy document laying the national-level strategy for the new millennium. It is ambitious and claims universal access to quality education as its key aim, keeping with the Sustainable Development Goal 4 of the United Nations Agenda 2030. One of the highlights of the NEP is its emphasis on mother tongue education at the primary levels in both state- and privately owned schools. The present paper critically assesses the NEP 2020, primarily in relation to the language-in-education policy. The paper argues that it presents a “contradiction of intentions,” aspiring towards inclusion of the historically disadvantaged and marginalised groups on the one hand, while practising a policy of aggressive privatisation and disinvestment in public education on the other.

The NEET institutes an ecosystem of exclusivity and skews the composition of those who can access medical education.

The in-service teacher training provided in the public schooling system has often been criticised on grounds of both inefficiency and ineffectiveness. Two principles that can overcome these weaknesses are a “third-space” curriculum built around problem-solving practices of teachers and leveraging the adaptability of online mechanisms for professional development. We describe a large-scale experiment based on these principles. The main lesson is that our training establishments need to develop new technical and academic capabilities, or at least partner with institutions having the necessary expertise.