Making the elementary schooling system in India work for disadvantaged learners: a cross-scalar comparative study of accountability relations

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Global development policy is concerned with equitable learner participation and achievement, yet low learning outcomes and stark learning inequalities are persistent. Marketisation of provisioning is a growing trend in education that has complicated relations of accountability and regulation. This study aims to advance an understanding of accountability for improved learning outcomes for disadvantaged children by departing from the established approach of isolating specific variables for reform. Instead, it conceptualises accountability as systemic and relational. It is designed to show how multiple actors across the home, community, school and bureaucratic scales have particular norms and interests, modes of participation and regulatory roles that shape learning outcomes for disadvantaged children. It examines both the formal rule-based relations of these system actors, and the informal, everyday practices of accountability - all of which bear significantly on progress towards policy goals, yet are so far poorly understood. This project focuses on learning outcomes for 'disadvantaged learners' in India: children of primary school age who are disadvantaged by a range of structural inequalities, which are often cross-cutting, such as gender, location, caste, and class. It takes key quality and equity provisions in India's Right to Education Act (RTE) and examines how these are taken up in different ways, and with respect to differing understandings of education quality and equity held by actors across the four system scales of home, community, school, and bureaucracy. Empirical work takes place in two States, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra, focusing on two districts and within each, two blocks which are purposively selected to enable intra-block, inter-district and inter-state comparisons. In each block, we sample ten schools, which include government, private and large scale 'alternative' provision to examine the accountability relations that surround differently positioned learners. The study design follows a sequential mixed methods approach, beginning with qualitative investigation and then using a quantitative survey to validate and extend the qualitative analysis. We will use an innovative process tracing approach, anchored in the sample schools, to track how specific policy initiatives stemming from RTE directives are understood by multiple actors across system scales. This enables the study to identify how their practical actions converge and diverge with goals for learning - as understood both by the RTE and these actors - and the impact on children's learning outcomes. Our partner NGO, CSEI will co-deliver our impact strategy. We will co-facilitate workshops for bureaucratic actors that promote discussion of relational accountability and its implications for improving learning outcomes for disadvantaged learners. Co-produced outputs will include: a new Education Equity, Quality, and Accountability Audit (EEQAA) tool which community-led organisations will administer with CSEI support; a professional development module for Cluster Co-ordinators (who lead teacher meetings and have monitoring roles); a draft multidimensional framework for 'quality of education' which CSEI will disseminate nationally via its civil society networks. The project's approach to analysing multi-scalar accountability relations will challenge existing understandings of systemic reform, and provide empirical knowledge and tools with direct application for improving quality and equity in elementary education in India. Beyond this, its conceptual advances, outputs, and innovative process-tracing methodology will deliver analyses with international significance for state and non-state actors concerned with improving learning outcomes for disadvantaged learners.