UNDERSTANDING AND IMPROVING SOCIAL INCLUSION IN INDIAN PRIVATE SCHOOLS

Introduction

Social and economic stratification of schools can hurt both the equity and effectiveness of education systems. These concerns are exacerbated in settings where private schools account for a significant share of enrolment, as is the case in India - where nearly half the population attends a fee-charging private school.

Project Overview

The EDINCLUSION project proposes an ambitious research agenda focused on understanding and improving school integration in India - which is the world’s largest school system, and also among the most unequal. The agenda focuses on studying and improving the impact of India’s landmark school integration policy, under the Right to Education Act 2009, which mandates that 25% of places in private schools should be reserved for students from disadvantaged economic and caste backgrounds (with the government reimbursing fees).

This is likely the world’s largest-ever school integration initiative, affecting several times as many children as school desegregation initiatives in the US in the 1960s. Yet, despite its importance, there is remarkably little research on either the impact of this policy or on ways to improve its effectiveness.

Work Packages

The proposal features three work packages to address these gaps:

1. Assessment of Effects: An assessment of effects on current beneficiaries, identified using the lottery-based allocation of seats in oversubscribed schools.
2. Encouraging Applications: Identifying approaches to encourage applications from poorer eligible students, evaluated through two multi-armed randomized control trials.
3. Understanding Private School Markets: A systematic understanding of private school markets using innovative survey design methods, panel data, and exogenous policy-induced variation for identification.

Expected Outcomes

The results of this research program will generate ground-breaking evidence on:

1. The effectiveness of this large school integration program.
2. Scalable ways to improve its effectiveness.
3. Fundamental insights about the functioning of urban school markets in developing countries.