Systemic and grassroot level challenges faced by first generation learners in India

Abstract

From a broader perspective, India as a country is striving towards universal primary education through the Right to Education act and several other policies. This undoubtedly paints a great picture of India in terms of its efforts towards promoting inclusion in the Education sector. And the numbers and statistics too support the above claim. However, the numbers revealed by UNESCO Institute for statistics and UNICEF tell a ompletely different story. These numbers are nothing but the population of “out of school” children which is staggering number of 1.4 million children in India in 2015. This includes children who never went to a school as well as children who had dropped out from formal school education. While several researchers have done their bit to study and understand the causes behind this problem, we decided to further break down this problem and study from a different perspective. A majority of these students have been characterized to be Scheduled castes and tribes, poor and from a geographically is advantaged location. We then decided to understand the systemic and grassroots level challenges faced by the First-generation learners as a whole which encapsulates all the above-mentioned categories as well and study the intersectionality. Through extensive interaction with the First-generation learners, we were able to understand the on-ground realities and the day-to-day challenges they are facing when it comes to attaining formal education. These insights can then be used to recommend suitable policy changes to better support the First-generation learners and achieve the real meaning of “Inclusion”.