Missing Middle of Educated Unemployable: A Critical Perspective on Secondary Education in India

Abstract

This chapter finds that educational inequality in terms of educational attainment and attendance has gone down for the youth aged 5–29 between 2007–08 and 2014, albeit at a slow pace. However, the change in secondary education has been relatively slow in the seven years. The glaring inequity is the average expenditure on secondary education in the top-most quintile. This is approximately two times even the second top-most quintile. Not only does the top-most quintile has more access to secondary education, it is being reinforced further by the significant gap in expenditure per student and therefore quality and learning outcomes. Plus, there are spatial variations in terms of both states and rural–urban gaps. In terms of outcomes, the quality of secondary education is inadequately preparing the youth for higher secondary education and work place. It is argued in this paper that the Indian secondary education needs to be made compulsory. Further, there should be focus on outcomes in terms of skills that will be needed for the twenty-first century citizens. Skills could be cognitive, non-cognitive, physical/psychomotor and technical and vocational. The secondary education system should concentrate on the supply side of skills, providing general skills that are foundation in nature, which will be needed across the work, higher education and citizenship space. Pre-vocational curricula should be included in terms of teaching attitude to work rather than trades itself. Teaching of trades and such should be taught at the higher secondary level in collaboration with firms.