School Experiences in India: A Retrospective Study

School is an extremely important part of an individual’s life. It consists of 12 years of a child’s life and has a major influence on their development. The present study aimed to understand school experiences in a retrospective manner. The sample consisted of 37 adults who had graduated school in the time frame of 2009-2017. Both quantitative and qualitative measures were utilised. For the former, the Perceived School Experiences Scale and the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale were implemented. For the latter, a form was created with some rating questions, MCQs, as well as open-ended questions relating to participants’ school experiences. Quantitative results revealed weak correlations between the studied school categories and self-esteem. School connectedness was the only category with a modest relationship with self-esteem (rs(35)=0.47, p<0.001). Qualitative data revealed that adults remembered their peer relationships and certain teachers positively, while at the same time, strongly recalled insensitive and biased teachers negatively, and finally, wished to change the bullying experiences, and in some cases wanted a co-educational schooling experience. Implications and suggestions for future research have been discussed.