education_kerala_paper

ISSUES IN SCHOOL EDUCATION IN CONTEMPORARY KERALA

C. P. Chandrasekhar
V. K. Ramachandran
R. Ramakumar

A paper prepared for UNICEF, New Delhi
April 2001

Acknowledgements
K. Jayakumar IAS gave generously of his time for interviews and gave full access to documents and information on school education from the
Education
Department and DPEP.
C.
Ramakrishnan
(Co-ordinator,
Educational Research Unit, Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad), P.K.
Michael Tharakan (Director, Kerala Institute of Local Administration,
Thrissur) and T.M. Thomas Isaac (Member, State Planning Board and
Associate Fellow, Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram) gave us detailed interviews and information on school education in
Kerala and comments on the findings. A.K. Shiva Kumar of UNICEF, New
Delhi provided us with all-India data; he commented on a draft of this report and provided much encouragement. We also received help and information from K. Narayanan Nair and P.R. Gopinathan Nair of the
Kerala Research Project on Local Level Development, Centre for
Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Ms Prema of the DPEP and G.
Manamohan of the State Planning Board, Government of Kerala.
We are deeply grateful to all of them; we could not have written this report without their generous help.

ISSUES IN SCHOOL EDUCATION IN CONTEMPORARY KERALA

C. P. Chandrasekhar
V. K. Ramachandran
R. Ramakumar

By the late 1980s, it was clear that Kerala had not only achieved mass literacy, it had also been able to ensure that the

school. social overwhelming
Although

and

majority

residual

political

of

problems

attention

in

its of children access Kerala

in

entered

remained, the 1990s

turned to other issues in school education: the retention of children in schools, the quality of education and new forms of community participation in school education.

This

paper

deals

with

issues

in

References: (2000), “Arivinte Grama Panchayat”, Bhat, P. N. Mari and S. Irudaya Rajan (1990), “Demographic Transition Caldwell, J. C and Pat Caldwell (1985), “Education and Literacy as Factors in Health”, in S P (1994), Chandrasekhar, C. P (2000a), “Economic Reform and Budget”, Economic and Political Weekly, April 1-7. Chandrasekhar, C. P and Jayati Ghosh (2000), “Fiscal Devolution in the Era of Globalisation”, Macroscan, District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) (2000c), DPEP Interventions in Girls’ Education, Handbook, DPEP, Ganesh, K. N and C. Ramakrishnan (2000), “Education and People’s Planning Campaign: The Kerala Experience”,