Inclusive Secondary Education in India : Challenges and Future Directions <Special Issue : Right to Education>

The focus of this article is on secondary education in India as the transition phase from school to higher education, as an instrument of promoting education as a right and as the pathway to higher education and through that to social mobility and equality. The dimensions selected for detailed analysis are: participation of the SCs and STs, the gap between the education of boys and girls and the regional variations with a focus on the northeast. I am revisiting this composite focus on marginal social groups after a long hiatus (Chanana, 1993). The dimensions of caste, tribe, region and gender are selected because students from these social groups, region and women continue to negotiate inequitable cultural barriers, a theme I have been exploring consistently in the context of gender (Chanana, 1998, 2006). This is followed by a discussion of the contribution that schools can make to help students move into colleges by providing the soft skills and cultural capital thereby making secondary education inclusive. Last section focuses on the future areas and directions of research.