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About the School Choice Campaign

Right to Education of Choice!

CCS's flagship project, the School Choice Campaign (SCC) was launched in 2007 and is a campaign to bring about the much-needed reforms in the system of school education in India today using the three pronged approach of Education Vouchers, Regulatory Reforms and Encouraging Edupreneurs.

School Choice is a policy reform idea developed to increase the involvement of parents in responsibly schooling their children by giving them ownership of the task. Based on education vouchers as a mode of funding for the schooling of needy children, School Choice is also designed to reduce disparity in the quality of schooling offered by the government and increase transparency and efficiency.

Article 26 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights states that parents have a prior right to choose the type of education they want for their children. We at the School Choice Campaign also believe that what the poor need today is not just Right to Education, but the Right to Education of Choice. As a public policy think tank, we have long been conducting research and advocating School Choice for the poor in India .

VISION

To create an education system in India where all children receive quality education of their choice.

MISSION

• Efficient use of public funds through innovative schemes and policies.
• Promote equity and quality through diversity (as opposed to uniformity) by comprehensive liberalization.

Efficient Use of Public Funds

• School vouchers or voucher-like schemes
• Pedagogical and operational autonomy to government schools
• State schools given on learning contract
• Performance pay for principals and teachers
• Convert state funding to per student basis

Promote Equity & Quality through Liberalization

• Delicensing, deregulation and decentralization (curricula, textbooks, exams, state boards, school management)
• Support for budget private schools through a credible affiliation board, independent performance assessment, and microfinance
• Legalization of for-profit schools

WHY THE FOCUS ON CHOICE?

• Empowerment
• Independence
• Opportunity
• Accountability
• Alternatives
• Community Schools
• Equality of opportunity
• Liberty
• Competition
• Innovation
• Decentralised delivery
• Liberalisation

SCHOOL CHOICE CAMPAIGN APPROACH

1. Mass Campaign: It helps build grass root pressure for change by increasing awareness among poor parents about the resources that governments spend in their name, and what they should demand for genuine empowerment. The National Alliance for School Choice, with local partners, runs the mass campaign in select states. The campaign has so far collected 27,38,552 signature petitions demanding School Choice and presented them to state education ministers as well as to local elected and government officials.
2. Policy Campaign: The policy campaign increases understanding of school choice ideas and reforms through meetings with people in the government, political parties, and unions. We choose states that are more amenable to choice reforms and where we have access to top leadership.
3. Public Opinion Campaign: It targets a broader group of opinion makers in the field of education - columnists, editors, activists, NGOs, academics, foundations. It is focused more on Delhi and other metros which shape the national opinion. It is focused more on Delhi and other metros which shape national opinion.
4. Legal Campaign: It has two sub-components, one to file PILs and writ petitions in High Courts and the Supreme Court to advance ideas of school choice; and second, to help defend private schools when attacked by vested interests.
5. Pilot Projects: Through various pilot projects on school vouchers and other reform ideas, we ourselves would test the applicability and identify implementation strategies. More importantly, we would work with governments that have announced voucher schemes, like Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh, to design, implement and evaluate these schemes. In 2007, in our Delhi School Voucher Project, 408 students from the poorest wards of Delhi were awarded vouchers at the hands of the Delhi Chief Minister and the Education Minister.

Click here to download School Choice Campaign Brochure