Can schools' accountability for learning be strengthened from the grassroots? Investigating the potential for community-school partnerships in India Our project explores the potential of community based accountability relationships to raise children's foundational learning outcomes, with a focus on the most disadvantaged primary-school learners: namely those who are from poorer households and, within these, girls. We ask both whether and how changes occur when school actors are supported to view their accountability as being primarily to their local community and their goal as being to raise all children's learning. To do this, we evaluate a grassroots intervention that supports school actors to work directly with their communities to develop a shared understanding of children's learning levels, collaborate in planning how to raise them, and facilitate action both inside and outside the classroom. In addition to analysing changes in children's learning, we will examine the intervention's capacity to create changes in school-community relations, and teachers' attitudes perceptions, and actions in the classroom.

The intervention builds on two of Pratham's grassroots literacy campaigns to incorporate school-community accountability relationships. Lakhon mein Ek (LME) was primarily an information campaign, supporting communities to undertake and discuss their own independent assessments of children's learning outcomes. Reading Week (RW) provided community volunteers with packages of simple materials with which to work with children to improve their foundational literacy and numeracy skills. The proposed intervention, which we call LME+, seeks to enhance the impact of these previous interventions by working directly with school actors to help them engage and work with their local communities. Research and development activity contributing to the UK’s strategy to address key development challenges.