Elementary Education Reform in India: A study of ideas and approaches since the 1990s

India’s elementary education system faces many debilitating challenges including poor quality of education and in some places, even limited access to a school. Multiple studies have examined the challenges of implementing national and state level policies and programs. However, an examination of the political economy of the ideas and strategies to reform the systems is limited and we need to know more about why our policies were designed the way they were and how has this shaped both the imagination of the reform and more fundamentally the very goals of public schooling. This project, funded by the Research for Improving Systems of Education (RISE) program based in University of Pennsylvania, examines the key public debates, contestations and actors at the national and the state-levels that have shaped reform initiatives. The research will deep dive into four key junctures of education reform– the DPEP, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan/ the Right to Education and the New Education Policy 2020. To better understand the specific state-level debates the study will ground itself in three States– Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. RISE is a multi-country research initiative which seeks to identify “what makes education system coherent and effective in their contexts, and how the complex dynamics within a system allow policies to be successful”. The seven countries are: Nigeria, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Indonesia, India and Pakistan.