Community Participation in School Management: A Case of Two Tribal Villages in India

Abstract

One of India’s flagship programmes relating to education is the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) (Universalization of Elementary Education), which mandates free, compulsory, and equitable primary education to all children. The study aimed at understanding whether a decentralized school management system makes it easier for the tribal community to participate in the School Management Committee (SMC) through open dialogue to ensure better school governance and access to quality education for the children. The SMC provides parents with a forum to represent themselves as key players in managing the school. School Management Committee meetings facilitate open communication and awareness among underrepresented parents to negotiate their rights and entitlements in a local setting. Thus, communication is employed on two levels: to disseminate knowledge and to engage ordinary people in a dialogue that leads to collaboration. Participatory development communication, which includes ideas like “information as means of awareness and open dialogue as a means of collective action” provides the theoretical underpinning for this study. The research employed a qualitative case study design to obtain in-depth data from SSA management staff at all levels, as well as parents, students and community members in two schools of two tribal dominated villages in Sundargarh district of Odisha. The research was split into four phases to ensure thorough coverage of the three objectives. The results showed that even while parents made up a sizable portion of the school committee, they were clueless about the responsibilities that came with their membership. Although several co-learning sessions are mandated by SSA to encourage open dialogue, neither the school nor the parents get involved. An information dissemination intervention strategy called Information, Awareness, Motivation and Action (IAMA), involving a few local educated youths, parents, teachers, and students, was designed and implemented in two tribal villages to address the issue. Interpersonal communication helped to build relationships between the teachers, literate youth volunteers, and community members. The sense of ‘commonness and homogenization’ process established trust on both sides that further helped to change the perception, attitude, and beliefs of the community that they are not passive participants in the process of education for their children. The study concludes that educational reforms have usually been top–down processes; no doubt the objectives have always been good, but they fail at the ground level because of the overarching disconnect. One positive impact that was observed was that local success stories motivate the parents to care for their child’s career. A mobilization process led by local success stories can strengthen the social capital, and then only it can create new success stories, not by force but by choice.