Reaching the unreached through participatory planning: school mapping in Lok Jumbish, India

Publication year: 
1999

While the rational allocation of educational facilities may help bridge the gap of physical distances between learners and the school, it may still leave out a large number of children from the purview of primary education. This is the case with respect to Rajasthan, India - the barrier is not one of physical distance, but of social, economic and cultural blocks. Thus, if bringing all children to school and ensuring that they complete the whole cycle of primary education is the objective, merely preparing distance matrices through school-mapping exercises will not solve the problem. School-mapping is a set of techniques and procedures used to plan the demand for school places at the local level and to decide the location of future schools and the means to be allocated at the institutional level. Lok Jumbish - 'the People's Movement', launched in 1989 to mobilise support and participation at the grassroots, of the rural community in primary education programmes - attempts an elaboration of school-mapping to base both diagnosis and decision-making on local community parameters, in addition to distance and economic rationale. The approach used pays particular attention to mobilising demand; it specifically emphasises the need to articulate formal and non-formal education to satisfy specific demands. The basic principle defining the approach relies on genuine participation at the local level and empowerment of the members of the community. The book examines this broadened approach to school-mapping, as adopted under Lok Jumbish. It looks particularly at the process of preparing the school map and the role the community plays in it. The first chapter introduces the study and specifies the methodological details. The next chapter is a conceptual analysis of the framework of school-mapping in Lok Jumbish. The following three chapters contain empirical data and their interpretation on the three major dimensions of school-mapping: school-mapping processes, community participation and the changing scenario of primary education. The last chapter presents a summary of the entire study, highlighting some major findings and conclusions.

Pages: 
192 p.
Publisher
IIEP
International Institute for Educational Planning, 7-9 rue EugÞne-Delacroix, 75116 Paris, France
Paris
Publisher reference: 
IIEP

How to find this resource

Shelfmark in IDS Resource Centre
D : Education 4050