Picture this: a sunny winter morning, bright yellow mustard fields in full bloom, children in assorted uniforms making their way to school in rural Bihar. As the rest of the Delhi team continued working on the PAISA-MDM report, I’d arrived in Bihar last month to learn more about a much-publicised government campaign to distribute entitlements to government school children through cash transfers. The entitlements include uniforms, scholarship, financial incentives (protsahan), and cycles (for high school students), to be distributed through various educational schemes of the Government of Bihar (GoB).[1] But these entitlements are already given out each year; so what was different this year? As it turns out, quite a lot. In this two-part blog, I first discuss the norms of these schemes, then how the campaign is being implemented on the ground in Bihar.

What’s different this year?

According to the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act (henceforth, RTE Act), all students – girls and boys, regardless of socio-economic background – are entitled to textbooks, uniform and transport allowance. The GoB also offers other monetary and non-monetary incentives mentioned above, aiming to increase educational attainment[2] in the state. In most cases, funds for these schemes flow down to the school-level quite late, by December or even later in subsequent years. To illustrate, according to PAISA District Report Studies 2011, almost half of all uniform receipts for financial year (FY) 2009-10 occurred in FY 2010-11 in Nalanda district; this proportion was 44 percent in Purnea.

1. 1.       Direct, more visible cash transfers to students

In elementary schools, up until two years ago, all entitlements (except for textbooks) were disbursed in cash or by cheque in Bihar. Since 2011-12, however, money for uniforms was to be deposited directly in students’ bank accounts, after which it was expected that the families would buy the uniforms. In contrast, scholarships and protsahan were to continue being handed out in either cash from the Gram Panchayat (for classes 1-6) or by cheque from the District Welfare Officer (for classes 7-8). The norms for these schemes are given below in Table 1.

Table 1: Norms for Various State Educational Schemes, Bihar, 2012-13 (Y in a cell indicates the scheme is applicable to the category)

This year, however, the distribution procedure has changed, in part due to difficulties in opening younger students’ bank accounts in 2011-12.[3] The campaign now involves money being sent to each school’s account, from where it would be withdrawn and then distributed in camps held in each school. These camps are to be conducted Panchayat-wise over a two-week period (January 15-31, 2013). While cash amounts for scholarship would be given out directly to eligible students, the protsahan would still be given by cheque. Entitlements for uniforms would be now doled out based on a “voucher system.”[4] The idea is to reimburse students after proof of purchase (both cloth and receipts, or “vouchers”) has been presented to the teachers.

1. 1.        Direct link of entitlements with attendance

However, the biggest change this year is a controversial condition imposed on the distribution: only those students who have an attendance rate of 75 per cent or more between April and September 2012 will be entitled to receive these benefits. It is widely known that attendance rates in Bihar are typically low, hovering around 50 per cent (PAISA 2011), and that the government is attempting to remedy the issue. As of right now, it is uncertain whether the government will continue to link this condition on entitlements to boost attendance in coming years, but in the event it does, it would automatically imply that the earliest the distribution of benefits could occur would be as late as October,[5] more than half-way into the school year.

1. 1. Wide participation of public representatives and third-party institutions in monitoring

Lastly, the administration has devised monitoring mechanisms for the campaign which it considers to be quite novel and stringent. They require the officers of the state, district, block SSA administrations to undertake daily rounds of the camps, along with local police officers and officers from the District Magistrate’s office and Welfare Departments.[6] Additionally, each district has to ensure that audio-visual recording is undertaken at each camp. However, during our field-visits to schools, we observed the recording taking place in only a couple of instances.External monitoring of the camps is to be conducted by the AN Sinha Institute of Social Studies, based in Patna. Volunteers from a local college in each district have been trained by the Institute and are to visit a selected sample of schools across the state. Finally, public representatives – MPs, MLAs, Gram Panchayat Mukhiya and Sachiv, School Management Committee members – and the village community at large are supposed to play a monitoring role as well.

Big political push

Interviews with members of the SSA administration at state, district and block-levels revealed that the administration has been looking for more visible ways to incentivise enrolment and attendance; in the words of a senior state-level official, the “political executive would like a big show.” This campaign is also seen as a follow-up to the GoB’s drive last year to reduce double enrolment in government and private schools – where children were on government schools’ rosters but really attended private unaided schools. Almost all officers and teachers interviewed were of the opinion that this condition of required attendance is necessary; that the State Government wants to send out a clear message that these benefits can only be availed of if a child has been to school regularly.

Conditional cash transfers linking monetary and in-kind benefits with school attendance are not new and have been successful elsewhere, as in Mexico.[7] However, the fact remains that this campaign is conflicting with RTE norms, and, in the absence of clearly-communicated guidelines to the concerned officials, has seen shoddy implementation. Senior officials were willing to relax the “eligibility criteria” only in the case of the Chief Minister’s Cycle Scheme for high school girls, conceding that it would be hard for girls to come to school without a bicycle and attain the required attendance rates.

Elementary school students with the cloth they’ve bought for their uniforms, waiting to be reimbursed for their entitlement. Cloth and receipts both must be shown at the school as proof of purchase to avail of the cash reimbursement (Nalanda, January 2013)

Hurriedly conceived, hurriedly rolled out

It appears that greater thought needs to go into the implementation of such a transfer scheme. Linking entitlements with attendance has posed significant problems in Bihar, especially in terms of logistics and the short time given to prepare for the campaign. Teachers, headmasters, and block officers began hearing about the campaign in early December through newspaper articles. However, in Nalanda for example, block officials were given training and copies of guidelines at the District Resource Centre (DRC) on December 22, 2012, during the monthly meeting; guidelines and necessary forms to prepare lists of eligible students were then shared with the schools between December 24 and 28^th. These were to be filled and returned to the block by January 4^th.  In contrast, in Purnea, Block Education Officers (BEO) had not even received a copy of the campaign guidelines, with instructions and details only being shared verbally in meetings; similarly, details were shared with headmasters verbally during block-level meetings. Thus, awareness levels of the campaign’s details – such as how to hold camps, district-to-school fund transfer information, and campaign schedule for each school – were low at the school-level. More worryingly, clear information about which children would be given their entitlements – and why – had not been adequately shared with parents.

It is laudable that the Government of Bihar wants to visibly address the key problem of attendance and enrolment in its schools, aiming to increase educational attainment. However, questions regarding the design and efficient implementation of the campaign remain. In Part II, I’ll discuss how the campaign and its monitoring are being implemented at the school-level in Nalanda and Purnea, the challenges being faced (the campaign will continue well into February now), and the scope for such a conditional cash transfer scheme in this context.

Acknowledgments: Dinesh Kumar and Seema Muskan, PAISA Associates in Nalanda and Purnea districts, contributed to this blog with reports from the field.

[1] In all there are eight Government of Bihar schemes through which benefits are being given to students in primary, middle and high schools. These are: 1. Chief Minister’s Uniform Scheme; 2. Chief Minister’s Uniform Scheme for Girls; 3. Chief Minister’s Cycle Scheme for Girls; 4. Chief Minister’s Cycle Scheme for Boys; 5. Bihar Shatabdi Chief Minister’s Uniform Scheme for Girls; 6. Chief Minister’s Financial Incentive Scheme for Girls; 7. Scholarship Scheme (for students from Backward and Very Backward Classes; for minorities; and for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students); and 8. Financial Incentives for Minority Boys and Girls.

[2]Educational attainment here refers to the number of years spent in school, through increased enrolment and attendance. Depending on whom one talks to, officials sometimes also link these incentives indirectly to learning levels.

[3] According to teachers and the administration, banks were not in favour of opening accounts for so many minors where money would be deposited and then almost immediately withdrawn. A lack of human resources in banks to manage such a huge number of accounts was also cited as a reason.

[4] Apart from the fact that in 2011-12, cash entitlements for uniforms in Nalanda and elsewhere had not been distributed due to a lack of functioning bank accounts for students, anecdotal evidence suggests that in the past issues have also been faced with households not utilising funds towards uniforms as required.

[5] The reason for this being that distribution could only occur after attendance rates have been recorded for the previous six months (April to September) and funds accordingly transferred to the districts for distribution.

[6] Three different welfare departments of the state government are the source of funds for scholarships and protsahan: Backward and Very Backward Classes Welfare Department; SC and ST Welfare Department; and Minority Welfare and Information Department. The only convergence with these Departments for the current campaign is that they release funds and monitor the camps.

[7] See here and here for analyses of the Programa Nacional de Education, Salud y Alimentacion (PROGRESA), a key poverty alleviation programme of the Government of Mexico which targets poor, rural households on three associated and complementary components: education, health and nutrition. In particular, mothers in eligible households are given money for each school-going child who attends at least 85 percent of classes and completes high school. School supplies are also subsidised.