School Choice Campaign (SCC), a policy reform initiative of Centre for Civil Society (CCS) organised the third annual School Choice National Conference titled Catalysing Education for All: Intention, Innovation and Implementation on 21 December 2011 at the India Habitat Centre. The participation of several top-level academicians, policy makers, government officials, education specialists and the media helped make the conference a grand success.

Professor Geeta Gandhi Kingdon’s key note speech on ‘Defining priorities for Quality Education’ set the tone for the day. This was followed by the opening address by Dilip Modi. The conference saw four powerful sessions with celebrated panelists, each leaders in their field and sector.

The first panel discussion looked at Implementation of RTE: One year after with specific emphasis on making State rules more effective, the role of budget private schools in aiding access and how School Management Committees could drive quality. This was followed by a session on Public Private Partnerships: Building sustainable model. This session focused on not only on programs like Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna for Education, and District Institute of Educational Training (DIET) but also on experiments with vouchers in Andra Pradesh. The third panel was centered on Secondary Education specifically on how the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan is addressing issues of access and on how vocationalisation is reinforcing goals for secondary education. In addition, the session also touched on how assessments help define quality. The day ended with a session on Disruptive Innovation in Education: Looking to technology which, examined solutions through the lens of technology and innovation, at self organised learning environments and blended learning.