Dr. Parth Shah’s prescription

Dr. Parth J. Shah is founder-president of the Centre for Civil Society, Delhi.

1. Separate government’s role as regulator, financier and provider of education.
2. Use tools of per-student funding such as vouchers, direct cash transfers, and scholarships to improve efficiency and accountability of public spending and provide more choice to parents.
3. Institute learning outcomes-based school recognition and regulation of government and private schools.
4. Conduct National Achievement Survey (NAS) every year for both government and private schools.
5. Participate in all future rounds of PISA and TIMSS.
6. Make district the basic unit of education governance and revise roles of education officers to reorient school inspection.
7. Create centralised district and state-level MIS (management information systems) for better governance, and place in public domain in formats that parents can understand and use.
8. Establish independent education disputes resolution tribunals with robust online grievance redressal systems.
9. Provide unique ID to all students, teachers and principals and maintain online portfolios of their work, training and performance.
10. Allow innovations in education delivery mechanisms through blended learning, MOOCs and magnet schools for gifted and challenged students. Encourage charter and PPP schools.
11. Amend the Companies Act for registration of schools as companies with for-profit and not-for-profit options.

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