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Paper short abstract:

Access to education is essential for sustainable urban development. Using ethnographic data collected from government schools in and around the city of Chennai, India, this paper applies the capabilities approach to an analysis of structural constraints in providing high-quality primary education.

Paper long abstract:

The provision of high-quality primary education can be viewed as a foundational step in achieving Habitat III's goal of 'putting people at the centre' when working towards sustainable urban development. However, with a massive and growing population of young people, India is still decades behind achieving universal access to education (UNESCO 2016). In an attempt to address disparities in both enrolment and access to quality education, the Indian government introduced a large-scale programme in 2000-2001 known as Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA); in the southeastern state of Tamil Nadu, the SSA undertook an ambitious project to replace traditional teaching methods with a learner-centred approach known as Activity-Based Learning (ABL) in government schools across the state.

While the ABL approach has been lauded for its rapid and efficient implementation, it has also been criticised for failing to bring about significant change in student outcomes (Hariharan 2011). Based on three months of ethnographic research conducted in 10 schools in and around the state capital, Chennai, in 2014-15, this paper utilises the social justice framework of the capabilities approach (Sen 1984; Robeyns 2005) to interrogate the sustainability of educational reform initiatives such as ABL. It makes the broader argument that policy interventions to provide resources such as education, which are meant to enhance well-being, cannot be effective without also taking into account the 'conversion factors', or structural constraints, underlying an individual's capacity to utilise these resources.