ESRC-DFID Accountability Studentship Research Proposal, reference JR13538

The ESRC-DFID funded project "Can schools' accountability for learning be strengthened from the grassroots?" which will be collaborated effort by The Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre and ASER Centre and the Pratham Education Foundation in India, aims to strengthen the school-community relationship in terms of sharing accountability to achieve the goal of increasing learning outcomes of children. In order to address this objective, it takes the case of a community-based intervention in rural India, which aims to engage with local school actors (teachers, head
teachers, administrators and school management committees) and provide them with knowledge and resources to implement activities in line with the goal of improving children's foundational learning in the classroom. Given the project, my research will focus on identifying main actor(s) and channels through which such a community engagement initiative can make more impact. My argument is that unless the main actors and the channels of spread of community engagement are identified, it is difficult to sustain the impact (if any) of such an initiative. The objective is to find out the 'roots' and 'routes' of community engagement, given the intervention in India. The identification of actor(s) will help in creating deeper impacts while identification of channels through which the engagement spreads to schools will help in understanding the effective mechanisms in engaging with the community