English-Medium: Schooling, Social Mobility, and Inequality in Bangalore, India

Abstract

Focusing on low-cost English-medium schools, this article investigates whether the ideology of the transformative potential of English-medium education squares with most people’s experiences of this education in urban India. It shows how such schools enable socioeconomic mobility among the middle classes while also creating new forms of inequality. It argues that a meaningful evaluation of education outcomes requires understanding students’ and their parents’ experiences of an education system and its impact on their lives.