Education Systems in South Asia: An Introduction

Abstract

This chapter introduces the Handbook on Education Systems in South Asia, a Major Reference Work in the Springer series on Global Education Systems. The chapter begins with a review of discussions about the South Asian region and provides a rationale for including, in the Handbook, ten countries as part of South Asia. The chapter proceeds to highlight the socio-cultural characteristics as well as the demographic and development features of these ten South Asian countries through internal comparisons and also through the identification of common development challenges that South Asia on the whole faces. The second section presents an overview of education in South Asia and locates the significance of the Handbook in the need for contextualized comparative understanding of educational systems in the region. Thereafter, the chapter introduces the eight sections of the Handbook spanning indigenous education traditions, history of education, school and higher education, political economy of education, knowledge and curriculum, teachers and teacher education, as well as learner diversities and educational marginality in South Asia. The chapter concludes by drawing attention to the challenges involved in efforts that seek to comprehensively map education systems in South Asia and suggests possibilities for shaping future research in this direction.