Policy Briefs & Reports

Over the last two decades, civil society organizations, academics, and researchers have debated different methods for measuring and improving transparency,
accountability and monitoring in development programs meant for the poor. In this area, Social Audits have emerged as a powerful method of including people’s participation in evaluating the implementation of programmes meant for them, since the most effective monitoring can be done through the involvement of people particularly the rights-holders. This has allowed not only verification of the official account of the programme but also assessing its usefulness to the people for whom they are meant. Social Audits involve looking into those areas of information, which conventional audit mechanisms and agencies typically do not include. It also involves looking into those areas that official data sources may not collect. These could be either information accessed and brought into the public domain or new information collected from the people. This paper suggests Guidelines for how Social Audits of schools may be conducted. The Ministry of Human Resource Development [MHRD], Government of India, had asked the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights [NCPCR] to develop a set of Guidelines for School Social Audits, under the Right to Education Act [RTE]. The author was the chairperson of the Working Group set up by the Commission for framing of the Guidelines, which were sent to the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) for appropriate action.

Suggested Citation: Kiran Bhatty (2013). Guidelines for School Social Audits. Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.