The government could improve the effectiveness of primary education by increasing its

collaboration with such organizations. NGOs extend education to underprivileged children and
develop innovations that improve the quality of education
• The government could support the efforts of NGOs to bring out-of-school children into schools
through timely supply of teachers, classroom space, and other resources. Targeted action is
needed to reach different types of out-of-school children—those who work, those who live in
slums, those on the street, those who are members of tribes or of migrant families, and those who
live in places without schools.
• To encourage young, first-generation learners to stay in school requires a supportive and
nurturing environment. To help make learning interesting and worthwhile for such children,
teachers in government schools could receive special training in new methods developed by
NGOs. Enhancing quality
Improving the quality of education requires working closely with key agents of change, such as
teachers, school heads, school management committees, and village education committees.
• To develop a cadre of trainers for primary school teachers, teacher training institutes would do
well to evaluate and learn from NGO models for teacher training.
• Teachers need a range of knowledge and skills to teach underprivileged children effectively.
Here again, NGO models would be a useful tool for teacher training institutes.
• NGOs and the government could collaborate in developing appropriate and flexible learning
assessment tools, in line with innovative teaching and learning methods.
• But without safeguards, large-scale replication by the government of such NGO innovations as
the “alternative school” and the “voluntary teacher” could lower the quality of education.
Government-NGO links •
The government and NGOs will need to share a common vision on how to achieve universal
primary education if India is to reach this goal.
• NGOs can be credible partners with the government in shaping policies for primary education.
This entails collaboration rather than parallel initiatives by NGOs.
• To stay at the cutting edge in education, NGOs should continually evaluate and refine their
models.
• If NGOs are to play a policy role in education, two areas that have been neglected will need to
be addressed—NGO capacity building and organizational development. This paper—a product
of the Robert McNamara Fellowships Program, World Bank Institute—is part of a larger effort
in the Bank to contribute toward the development of knowledge and human capital.
The author may be contacted at shanti.jagannathan@delind.cec.eu.int.
What NGOs can do for education?
NG0s can play an effective role in assisting the State to complement the
p u b l i c education system and to improve its effectiveness. As various survey revealed that t h e
experimental approaches of the NGOs have successfully tackled
many s h o r t c o m i n gs i n s c h o o l i n g. N G O s i n v o l v e m e n t i n
e d u c a t i o n i n c r e a s e s t h e accountability of the schooling system to the beneficiaries.
The NGOs can establish partnerships with the Government to share their models rather than
create islands of excellence. The effectiveness of NGO action is best in evidence in
the successful schooling of underprivileged children, communities in remote
locations, scheduled c a s t e , s c h e d u l e d t r i b e a n d o t h e r c h i l d r e n t h a t f a c e
s o c i a l b a r r i e r s t o e d u c a t i o n . NGOs can find out and accordingly suggest the
respective authority that targeted actions are required for specific deprived groups, for
instance, the urban poor, child workers or street children. NGOs can pioneer the concepts of the
voluntary teacher and the alternative school to counter teacher absenteeism and to make
appropriate education available for out of school children