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CASE STUDY – EDUCATION & PUBLIC POLICY
Problem Statement: How does one promote quality education in India within an environment where there’s a
lack of demand for it?
Case Study: A motivated social entrepreneur Mr. X wants to start a movement on quality education in India.
Mr. X graduated from some of the best universities both within India and abroad. Since education is the tool
that helped him to escape rural deprivation in his home state of Uttar Pradesh, he is motivated to provide it
to others. In order to accomplish this, Mr. X establishes a low-cost school to provide high-quality education
using ICT tools in his native village (which is located in the interiors of a backward district of rural Uttar
Pradesh). The students were classified into two categories: Junior Students (Grades 1-5) and Senior Students
(Grades 6-12). Junior Students were charged Rs. 100/month and Senior Students had to pay Rs. 150/month.
Mr. X expected that children will flock to the school at the proposition of quality education at low cost provided
by a founder with an impressive academic portfolio such as his. Despite the fact that each student paid such
low tuition fees, he hoped to sustain the school financially through high numbers of enrollment. He also
planned to hire teachers from neighboring cities who were qualified and to pay them competitive salaries.
He calculated that in order to run the school on the most basic operational level, the administration needed
to generate at least Rs. 1,00,000/month (costs included staff salaries, utilities, maintenance, stationery and
the EMI that had to be paid to the bank for the infrastructure loan availed by him).
Mr. X reached out to the most underprivileged children in the community. They were primarily from outcast
communities and went to government schools where there was little to no actual learning occurring. The
children attended the government schools chiefly because the school, books and mid-day meals were free of
cost. The first set of students were from these communities as their families wanted to provide English
medium education for their children.
However, just 56 children joined the school in the first year. By the second year, many children started
dropping out of the school despite the fact that Mr. X himself often took classes for the students. As a
consequence, the total number of students reduced to just 23 in the second year. These are the grave
challenges in front of Mr. X:
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Most of the parents of the enrolled students were incapable of consistently paying Rs. 100/month for
their children's education. Even this meagre amount was a challenge for most of them, as their daily
wages were consumed largely by survival needs.
It was difficult for Mr. X to meet the basic administrative costs of the school from such a meager
revenue stream, especially in the face of lowering numbers of student enrollment.
Parents who could actually afford to pay the fees didn’t want to send their children to Mr. X’s school,
since it was branded in the community as an institution for ‘poor outcasts’.
Students who started dropping out of Mr. X’s school enrolled in a government school. Availing shortterm benefits provided by government schools (including mid-day meals, free books and uniforms,
etc.) was more lucrative for their parents than quality education. Many parents coming from
underprivileged communities were unsure of the long-term, tangible benefits of quality education.
Assume that you are Mr. X and prepare action points to address the following questions to prevent the school
from being shut down:
1. What should Mr. X do to stave off the crisis at his school in the short term and in the long term?
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2. From a policy perspective, what strategies can be imbibed from this case study in terms of bringing quality
education to the underprivileged in India?
Your response to the above questions should not exceed 1000 words in total (excluding diagrams/graphs).