Open government in education: learning from social audits in India

In 2018, IIEP undertook exploratory work to better formulate what is meant by open government in the education sector, and to document and assess early, innovative initiatives developed in that field. On this basis, the Institute launched in 2019 a global survey to review existing initiatives. It also launched seven case studies illustrating the diversity of open government initiatives in education. Each case prioritises one of the following aspects of open government: open policy, open budgeting, open contracting, social audits, and crowdsourcing. The cases combine the following data collection methods: gathering of contextual information using secondary data related to the programmes/initiatives under review; a qualitative inquiry with semi-structured interviews; focus group discussions; participatory observation; and a large-scale quantitative enquiry involving the distribution of 250 questionnaires to school stakeholders using a multi-level stratified sampling method. This case study analyses the first social audit of education carried out in India, under the aegis of the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR). It was conducted as a pilot project across ten states of India, based on the principle that citizens can act as effective monitors of their own entitlements. The study itself is part of a series of case studies commissioned by IIEP under its open government in education research, and as part of its global capacity-building programme on Ethics and Corruption in Education.