India’s Right to Education Act: Parents’ perceptions on involvement in private schools and school responsiveness

India enacted the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE Act) (Government of India, 2009) for elementary education, reserving 25% of seats in private schools for socially and economically disadvantaged groups starting from grade 1 or pre-primary depending on the school setting. However, some studies show it may not be implemented and there is exclusion among students (Kaushal, 2012; Mehendale, Mukhopadhyay, & Namala, 2015; Noronha & Srivastava, 2013; Srivastava & Noronha, 2016). Furthermore, there is little research on how parents’ involvement in the school milieu plays a role in their children’s education, and whether private schools are responsive to parental concerns in view of the RTE Act. This study analyzes a data bank of 43 semi-structured interviews that were conducted with Dalit parents in one catchment area in Delhi in 2017 under a larger research program. The interviews were conducted following a household survey in 2015 with households that were successful in securing a ‘free’ private school seat under the Act. The analysis here is meant to direct fuller analysis in the larger research program. The main research question explored in this study is: How were parents involved in monitoring their child’s academic progress? This analysis applies the following dimensions, a supportive home learning environment, direct school contact, and inhibited involvement (McWayne, Hampton, Fantuzzo, Cohen & Sekino, 2004), to examine the parental involvement in this study. The analysis finds that parents were involved in the private schools they accessed through various ways. There were uneven experiences and reported school responses