School Choice Campaign is a policy initiative to ensure that all children receive quality education of their choice. Rooted in the philosophy that each child is unique, SCC believes that an education system can be called truly successful when it is flexible enough to cater to each student as an individual and yet ensure that the quality of education imparted in each institution is of the highest standard. Therefore, our work aims to reform education policy to make it more responsive to the needs of each student and give parents the choice to decide what is best for their child, whether it be a government, NGO, high-fee or budget private school. SCC is organising its 6th Annual School Choice National Conference on Friday, 19 December 2014 at The Theatre, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, India.

SCNC provides a much needed platform to identify critical issues in the education sector, review existing programs, explore strategies to face the challenges ahead and ideate on ingenious solutions to provide quality education to all children in India.

The theme of the conference this year is “Freedom in Education”

Various organizations working in the education space worldwide have been advocating for freedom in education. The concept of Freedom in the educational context is quite vast and has multiple aspects to it including curricular freedom, freedom to private and independent educators to run schools etc.. School Choice Campaign and its wide network of supporters and partners are primarily interested in exploring freedom in terms of more autonomy to the schooling community and choice to students and parents. In this year’s conference we will discuss Freedom in Education from the point of view of increased choice for students and parents.

Through an exploration of dimensions to freedom in education, we will seek to understand, how different stakeholders across the world perceive freedom? What are the policies that enable more freedom in different education systems?. We will also deep dive into some of the existing models that empower parents and students to exercise freedom in education. Appreciating the centrality of government and policy in choice as well as freedom in education, we will also look at what policy framework can help enhance this freedom.

The objectives of the Conference in 2014 are to:

• Bring together educationists and educational planners, policy experts, activists and government officials to discuss and debate dimensions of Freedom in Education

• Showcase innovative models—both national and international—that create an ecosystem of Freedom in Education

The three key sessions we will be hosting are: 1.) Dimensions of Freedom in Education 2.) Models of Freedom in Education and 3.) Future of Freedom in Education