The project is aimed at supporting and making local communities capable for taking ownership for the quality of government schools in their vicinity with an ambition to increase the quality of education imparted to their children in these schools. Through community participation and ownership, the project would attempt to achieve almost universal enrolment of children, accessible physical infrastructure and quality classroom learning processes in selected schools in the districts of Dumka and Gumla Shikaripara block (Dumka District), Raidih and Ghaghra (Gumla District) in the State of Jharkhand. In order to achieve universalisation of enrollment, it will be seen that the project will also enable the identification of children with disabilities through its community processes and will focus on making education an inclusive process in these schools, thus making education truly accessible even to these children. For this, the project will ensure that the needs and requirements of such children are addressed in these schools so that their enrolment in them and their participation in the classroom process increases. The project will ensure that the schools have the required facilities and appropriate opportunities to help these children learn along with the other children. Prajayatna, PRADAN and TRI entered into a tripartite agreement to collaborate for the improvement of education in Shikaripara and Raidih.The work in the two blocks was initiated in 2018 and in Ghaghra from 2019. The project in these three blocks has been implemented to tackle the lack of trust and ownership in government schools and a hierarchical management system that keeps the actual stakeholders out of the governance process. This has led to a lack of accountability due to which the quality of the schools has suffered. The idea is to address the issue of lack of quality in the public schooling system by ensuring community involvement through a decentralized approach to educational governance.

The overall impact from the intervention of the past two years:

• 50 children were enrolled for the first time in school and more than 250 children irregular children are now attending school on a regular basis.
• An improvement of 20% was seen with the attendance of children increased from 60% to 80%. It was seen that the School Management Committees of 100 of the 350 schools were active and meeting regularly to discuss the issues of the schools and find solutions to them.
• In a sample study done, it was seen that there was an improvement in the performance of 60% of the SMC
• More than 200 schools have been provided with teaching-learning materials, books, play materials, maintenance needs, etc by various stakeholders such as the teachers, parents, VOs, GP, etc.
• Quality of the mid-day meals is seen to have improved in 50 schools.
• The parents’ attitude and interest in the children have increased with 70% of the parents ensuring that the children attend school on time and maintain their personal hygiene which in turn has an impact on their attendance and attention in school.
• More than 30% of the parents have ensured that there is a space set apart in their houses for the children to study. They have made sure that all their books are kept there and it is covered and handled properly. They make sure that they are connected to what is happening in the lives of their children.
• A lot of improvement in terms of infrastructure was seen. Some of them are
• Improvement in learning was seen as well with children achieving 85% in Math in a sample study done pre COVID in January in Std 3 and 80% in Std 5. The achievement in language was seen to be 50% in both Std 3 and 5.
• Similarly, improvement was seen in 80% of the teachers interviewed during the sample study in the context of their engagement with the children and the community.

• Prajayatna has supported through providing information, capacity building, mentoring, etc.
• Initiated a blended mode of learning for all the children in the three blocks.
• A 24-week curriculum will be aligned keeping in mind the local context of the children the supportive people they have at home to facilitate the learning process.