Climbing Up The Participation Ladder

“More than 40% of the teachers fear that prolonged school closure might lead to a third of the students not returning once schools reopen”

The finding shared above is from a survey conducted by Oxfam. School closures due to COVID in March 2020 meant children were out of school for a prolonged period. Students didn’t just miss out on education but also building relationships with their peers and teachers. They no longer had access to healthy meals and a safe environment.

One of the biggest challenges now, once schools have started opening, is bringing children back to school. “Experts estimate that out-of-school children in India will double wherein marginalized social groups such as Dalits, Adivasis, and Muslims will be disproportionately affected. Girls will be affected even more and might lose up to 50% of their total years of education.”(Oxfam Report)

Since the schools have reopened, SMC members in Sonipat, Haryana, along with our support, have tried to problem-solve this challenge. As a first step, Samarthya ensured SMC meetings started happening again.

A government school in Rai saw around 60% student attendance even after a month of the schools reopening. Bringing back students to schools was discussed in the SMC meeting. SMC members decided to reach out to students, by visiting the homes of students and informing them about schools being open, clearing their doubts & fears around COVID tests required to join back. It’s of relevance to note that most of the parents making these visits are daily wage workers. Each day they spent doing this meant time out of their usual day-to-day work.

SMC members conduct home visits to bring children back to school, Govt School, Rai, Haryana

In Rasoi, Joginder ji, panch of the village during the meeting proposed that he will start munnadi or announcements to inform the students about school reopening, bearing all costs from his own pocket for this endeavour. Understanding the importance of children getting back to school as soon as possible, SMC members here also decided to do home visits to sensitize the parents hoping that their effort will get children back to school.

SMC’s involvement in schools was seen as an ‘interference’. SMCs just exist on paper in most schools. Before we began working with these schools, usually the school staff would decide if the meetings were conducted or not. Earlier the SMC members would just sign off on something that the school had decided on. Issues related to teachers coming late, mid-day meals, school infrastructure, etc would often remain unaddressed. Parents & students had no say in how the school was functioning.

Shivnaath & Subhash Ji, SMC member, Liwaspur (left) went to the bank post SMC meeting, even after a night-duty

These shifts are happening now. We are seeing such shifts within the SMC meetings as well.

In Liwaspur, we have seen parents come to the meeting after a night duty. We are witnessing teachers leveraging the platform of SMCs to bring up areas where they would need support. We are seeing students’ voices being encouraged and recognized in SMC meetings, where they sit with adults as an equal partner with the most stake in the decisions taken for the welfare of the school.

In the Liwaspur meeting, when students were asked for reasons of children not coming to school, these 6th graders had clear responses: ‘Since the schools have been closed for so long, a few children have lost interest in studies, and a few have started working with their parents.’

Moving school-community relations from that, towards being equal partners with distributed powers to each member has not been easy. Moving from an exclusionary model of governance in government schools to a more participative one has been no easy feat. Among other things, this model of participatory governance, as exemplified above, has increased the ownership of the community towards their neighborhood government schools. We believe that this ownership is the silver bullet for the India public education system.

In the SMC meeting in Liwaspur, teachers asked for support for online exams of students and issues they faced on the exam day when the websites was down, exam got postponed & a whole day of students got wasted as they had just come to give the test without books & notebooks.

We have tried to understand what would lead to this kind of engagement of citizens in the last 4 years. A research on citizen participation articulates this engagement as a different rung on a ladder moving citizens from non-participation to being consultant to being partners.

Our work with these schools has also shifted. Our work initially entailed doing home visits, sending numerous reminders to SMC members, reiterating roles of SMC to both school and parents, convincing staff to engage with parents. Now our work is more about facilitating meaningful discussions and ensuring everyone is heard. SMC members have been taking ownership of not just their children but of the school itself.

We see our SMC members climbing up this ladder of citizen participation which strengthens our belief in participatory governance everyday.