“…While children’s own accounts revealed these difficult conditions against which they persisted within schools, the literature on education in India has shown how these government schools (free for all children up to the elementary level) have become the last resort for those from the most marginalised contexts (Batra, 2013; Chavan, 2009; De et al, 2002–2003; Dyer, 2009; Mooij, 2008; Velaskar, 2010). However, despite the educational access fostered within these schools by affirmative action by the state (such as the passage of the Right to Education Act, 2009), the combination of the long and complex historical disadvantages faced by marginalised groups such as Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and minority communities, resulting in the lack of the ‘right’ cultural capital available to participate within education (Kumar, 1988, 2004a), as well as a result of the lack of accountability within the government school system itself (Vasavi, 2015), has led to poor educational outcomes for these groups, affecting continuation, the ability to pass the 10th grade board exams, access to further education after and consequently affecting employment opportunities, which has also led to continuing intergenerational poverty (Ray and Majumder, 2010).…”