A global approach to school education and local reality: A case study of community participation in Haryana, India

Abstract

In post-Jomtien phase, community participation in school education management has appeared as one of the most prominent features in all educational development programmes at global level. In line with this trend, India has also placed a significant focus on local communities in school management through various programmes such as LokJumbish, District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) and SarvaShikshaAbhiyaan, etc. All these programmes have been implemented with active involvement and financial assistance from international agencies such as UNICEF and World Bank. Considering community as a viable grass root institution, these community participation programmes have assigned some crucial aspects of school management, such as school mapping, social accountability, curriculum design, resources mobilization, etc. to local stakeholders. However, these programmes have failed to customize the global notion of community participation to meet the local circumstances in India. These programmes grossly undermine the local character of community served by the public schools. Since public schools in India are largely catering to the poor and marginalized section of the society, the capacity of local community vis-à-vis education remained very limited. Further, caste, gender, and social distance between teacher and stakeholders remain other unresolved issues. This paper tries to interrogate these concerns with the help of qualitative data collected through primary field survey based on semi-structured interviews with different stakeholders in a village in Haryana, India. The study argues that the current idealization of community participation can be problematic if we fail to imbibe the social and local ethos of specific region. While the role of community participation as strong viable grass root structure in effective school management remains a desirable goal for the future, given the present limitations, this is unlikely to bring about the required changes.