Inclusion-exempt Schools |
India’s Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 proclaims universal inclusion, yet elite private schools remain structurally exempt through regulatory autonomy, fee discretion, and selective enforcement. Operating via interlocking mechanisms of fee-gating, board-gating, and spatial-gating, these institutions consolidate caste–class homogeneity while evading equity mandates. This article contends that such policy-induced bifurcation undermines constitutional equality and fragments democratic citizenship. Genuine equality of opportunity demands system-wide inclusion that deliberately encompasses the very institutions shaping privileged trajectories.
India’s contemporary educational landscape is frequently conceptualised through the discourses of aspiration, market choice, and social mobility. In the last two decades, high-fee private schools affiliated with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE), and the International Baccalaureate (IB) have proliferated, positioning themselves as influential institutions that shape educational trajectories and redefine what constitutes “quality education” for the country’s middle and upper classes. This transformation mirrors a broader global shift in which schooling becomes a competitive market rather than a public good (Ball 2003). Yet, despite their growing centrality, these elite institutions remain largely absent from policy debates on equity and inclusion. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE) (GoI 2009) articulates a universal commitment to equal opportunity, but its implementation has been overwhelmingly directed at government schools and the low-fee private sector. Elite schools, by contrast, operate through a language of autonomy, parental choice, and market efficiency—rarely appearing in the state’s imagination as institutions with social obligations.
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