ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the state-civil society partnership in education and evaluates the extent to which this partnership has been able to bring about improvement in education delivery. Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS), reservations in the Panchayats and other such policies were targeted to benefit the marginalised classes. The umbrella programme of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), under which all education schemes and initiatives were combined, also provided opportunities to a number of civil society organisations (CSOs) to work with the government in the field of education. The MP state education board thus signed memorandums of understanding (MoU) with a number of CSOs to meet the challenge of universal elementary education. The teaching-learning process followed by the CSO in their class is that of activity-based learning method (ABL) based on the Multi-Grade, Multi-Level (MGML) method of learning. The aim of decentralisation was to involve the people at the grass-root level in decision-making and ultimately bringing power to the people.
