Neoliberal performativity in low-cost private schools: experiences from Kashmir

Abstract

Rural India is witnessing a surge in the number of low-cost, poor-friendly private schools that seemingly offer quality alternatives to government schools. Untangling stakeholders’ viewpoints, this research explains how outcome and performance-focused learning, broadly known as neoliberal performativity in education, is enacted in these institutions. It was discovered that parents’ and students’ distinct livelihood risks and worries encourage performativity in the teaching-learning process. Performativity was recognized as an instrumental tactic for avoiding the temporal uncertainties and worries that come with low-income status. School administration practices performativity because it aligns well with the objective of administering schools at a low cost. Teachers, on the other hand, argued that such enactment deprives children of the essential and enriching learning experiences needed for long-term success. The study advances understanding in the field of low-cost rural education and its long-term effects on quality education. It also explicates how such schooling practices enact performativity through some local learning practices.

Keywords:

• Performativity
• low-cost private schools
• rural education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 SSA is a flagship programme launched in India in 2003 to universalize access to elementary education.

2 Jammu & Kashmir is the northernmost state of India.

3 Right to education (RTE) act 2009/2010, made elementary education for the age of 6–14 a fundamental right in India from 2010.