School Choice National Conference 2012 - School Choice Campaign: Fund Students, Not Schools!

Education is a subject in the concurrent list of the Indian constitution. Center government makes national policies, Acts (eg Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education), design large-scale programs (eg Sarva Siksha Abhiyan). State governments then make rules on those ACTs, try to adapt those programs to their states and many a times create new program (Bihar's cycle scheme for girls) based on the needs of the state. Finally the rubber hits the road, when schemes and money reaches the district and the district collector along with the education line officers (eg district education officer) implements those ACTs and schemes in the schools. The priorities, motivation and challenges at different levels (Centre-State-District) are different and many a times not the same. These misaligned priorities and motivations have given birth to a non-functional education system for more than twenty crore children of India.

Though education delivery itself is not a political rhetoric in India, but political classes have started engaging in the popular education policies. Center and States have ongoing tussle on different aspects of education policies, budget allocations and budget sharing. There is a constant divide between experts, on how centralised and standardised the education system of India should be. At the ground level (district, block and panchayat) officials who implement these policies face a different set of challenges-like delay in disbursement of funds, numerous vacant positions, lack of incentives for delivery of education and complex local social dynamics.

Education delivery is a very real time system, which follows a racing academic year. Miscommunication and lack of clarity on different aspects of any policy, act or scheme, delay in policy decisions and mistimed fund disbursement cycles can derail the whole academic year. It's evident that the center-state-district relay race is highly mismanaged and the baton is not changing hands smoothly, resulting in grossly under learnt school going children.

Children, parents, teachers, principals, teacher's unions, private school managements, educationists, school boards, education bureaucracy and political class engage with education in different capacities and for different incentives.

There seems to be a strong need to have an open dialogue to track the education policy, from the parliament to the classroom to make an effort to align the disoriented wheel of delivery, to stop the evident leakages and to better the delivery to the users rather than the makers.

Session Briefs

Session 1: Sansad de Sadak Tak: Interplay of Policy & Politics
This session will have a moderated panel discussion on the governance of education, the way it translates form the policy tables of the Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) to contextual rules and regulations at the State education department and then finally the challenges to take those policies to the classrooms

Session 2: Stakeholders: Voice, Choice & Incentive
Education policies and rules, though formulated by officials in the national and state capitals, are consumed by very different set of stakeholders in villages, cities and towns and districts. In this session we will hear the unheard voices of these stakeholders; voices of children, parents, teachers and school leaders to unravel the complexities of education delivery process. After listening to those voices, we will bring a panel of experts to provide further analysis, international and national cases and possible policy and delivery level solutions to the issues raised by different stakeholders

Session 3: The Unspoken Club
While talking about policies, rules and the voices of different stakeholders, we fail to discuss about various dimensions of the education system. In this session we will talk about some unspoken dimensions - usage of technology, children with disability, use of data in policy making. Experts on the topics will discuss how these unspoken dimensions affect the delivery of education.

Session 4: Debate on 'Choice Vs Uniformity in Education'
Extending the discussion further on education delivery, this session will unfold in the form of a power moderated debate between two strong speakers on "Choice Vs Uniformity in Education."