COVID-19 and Education in India Impact on Access, Inclusion and Learning

List of tables xi

About the Editors xiii

Notes on Contributors xiv

Foreword by Krishna Kumar xvii

Acknowledgement xix

Introduction: COVID-19 Pandemic and Disruptions in India’s Education Sector 1

PART 1

Learning and Opportunity Losses in the COVID-19 Pandemic 15

1 Adolescent Girls’ Education: Precarity during COVID-19 pandemic 17

SHANTHA SINHA

2 Disruptions and Education: Assessing the effect of demonetisation, Goods and Service Tax (GST)and COVID-19 pandemic on loss of learning opportunities (LOLO) in Indian schools 29

FURQAN QAMAR AND SAMEER AHMAD KHAN

3 Reimagining Mathematics Education for a Post-Pandemic World 63

CHARU GUPTA AND MD. JAWAID HUSSAIN

PART 2

Access, Inclusivity, and the Idea of Education in the Online Pedagogy Market 91

4 Universalizing Access: Knowledge, Knowing, and Online Education 93

NAVNEET SHARMA, ANAMICA SHARMA AND SHOWKAT AHMAD MIR

5 Inclusive Education: Emerging challenges amid Covid-19 pandemic and way forward 108

KULDEEP KAUR

6 Education, Technology and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Meeting educational goals or drifting away? 124

DEEKSHA SHARMA AND ANSHU

PART 3

Neo-liberal Agenda of Education and the Pandemic 139

7 Indian Higher Education: Post-pandemic challenges to equitable access 141

KULDIP PURI

8 Unveiling Online Education Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic: A study of slum children in India 156

SATVINDERPAL KAUR AND MADHU DUTT

9 Upshots of the COVID-19 Pandemic on School children in Rural India: A Case of North-Western States 173

ANGREJ SINGH GILL, KAMLESH NARWANA AND SATINDER SINGH

Index 192

Biography

Satvinderpal Kaur is presently working as a professor and chairperson in the Department of Education, Panjab University Chandigarh. She is also a coordinator at the Centre for Academic Leadership and Educational Management, Panjab University. Her areas of teaching and research centre around pedagogic studies, educational policies and contemporary concerns of equity and quality in education, studies on exclusion versus inclusion with reference to minority groups such as Muslims, women, rural inhabitants, slum dwellers, tribal women, and other marginalized sections of the society.

Pradeep Kumar Choudhury is an assistant professor of economics at Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, India. In 2023–24, he was a Research Fellow at Harvard University, USA where he continues as an Affiliate Associate. Pradeep was the recipient of China-India Visiting Scholar Fellow of the Ashoka University in 2021–22. His research spans the field of development economics, with a focus on education. In his work, he focuses on the measurement and explanation of educational and learning inequalities, its interaction with climate, technology, and early life decisions. His co-edited volume titled Contextualising Educational Studies in India: Research, Policy and Practices was published by Routledge in 2021.

The educational havoc wrought by the Covid pandemic was nowhere more catastrophic than in India. With schools shuttered for 18 months, even the paltry substitute of 'online learning' remained inaccessible to many youngsters. Elites, their families largely insulated from any ill effects, are now eager to forget and move on. For their part, tech corporations peddle spurious forms of techno-solutionism trialled during the school closures. This volume from Satvinderpal Kaur and Pradeep Kumar Choudhury reminds us of the scale of the educational disaster triggered by COVID-19 and the enduring damage inflicted on India's most vulnerable citizens. Their work would make it harder to forget the consequences of this tragedy, inform efforts to remedy its effects and help ensure that educational authorities are better prepared to handle the next pandemic.

Edward Vickers, UNESCO Chair on Education for Peace, Social Justice and Global Citizenship, Kyushu University (Japan)

 

 

This volume brings together an interdisciplinary perspective on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education in India. The papers provide macro and micro analyses of the multiple educational crises at all levels through the pandemic years and beyond.  Overall, the volume offers insight into how the pandemic served the interests of a state distanced from the educational needs of marginalised students, and business groups keen to exploit the market for online and digital technologies in the name of efficiency. The authors argue that these factors shifted the very imagination of education in a democratic country and what is necessary to reclaim a vision of education for equity and social justice. The volume is an important contribution to scholarship on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education in India and is a valuable resource for students, researchers and those engaged in advocacy.

Nandini Manjrekar, Professor, School of Education, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai (India)