are presented in figure 1 (see also panel A of table 6), and shows how low the learning levels were **.** 15 percent of children age 7 to 14 could not recognize letter; Only 39 percent could read and understand a simple story (of grade 1 level); 38 percent could not recognize numbers.

The survey asked parents what they knew about learning levels of children in the village, as well as their own children **.** Twenty percent and 21 percent of parents, when asked, said that they had no idea of the village children’s ability to read a paragraph or write a sentence, respectively. The average parent overestimated by 12 percent the proportion of children in the village who could read a paragraph (table 2, panel B, column 1). Furthermore, 42 percent of parents were too optimistic about their own children’s ability to read, and 25 percent overestimated their ability to write. For example, 66 percent of the parents of the children who could read nothing thought they could at least read letters, and 36 percent of the parents of the children who could barely decipher letters thought their children could read and understand a story (see figure 2). The picture is even more distorted in math, where a full 82 percent of the parents of the children who could only recognize numbers, but could neither subtract or divide, believed that their kids could subtract (see figure 3).

# **3. The Interventions**

The fact that there were large gaps in what the average villager knows about the state of education in his village or what he can do to about it, suggested the possibility of getting them more involved by sharing this information with them. Moreover the palpable lack of any urgency associated with the problems in education suggested that motivating the villagers and helping them coordinate on doing something about education might also make the VEC more effective. To achieve this, Pratham, a very large non governmental organization long involved in trying to improve the quality of education in India, developed and experimented with three different methods of mobilizing the communities and sharing information with them.

# **3.1 Intervention description**

All three interventions adopted the same basic structure to share information on education and on the resources available to villagers to improve the quality of education. The intervention started with small-group discussions carried out in each hamlet over at least two days. In all these meetings, Pratham staff members acted as facilitators, encouraging discussion by raising questions, rather than providing facts: Do you know about the status of education in your village? Do you think children are learning? What aspects of education concern you the most? The intervention culminated in a general village meeting, typically attended by the Pradhan (village head) and the school headmaster. The intervention teams tried to facilitate the discussion in this meeting so that local key actors of the village (the school teachers or Gram Pradhans) provided both general information about the provisions and resources available at village level, as well as village-specific information on the existence of VECs, its membership, what resources it receives, and the different roles it can play. However, Pratham facilitators were provided a fact sheet covering information about the public education system and VECs, and checked whether all these facts were shared at the village meeting. If something was missing, they would raise it themselves. In the following weeks, facilitators visited each VEC member and gave him or her a written pamphlet on the roles and responsibilities of the VEC, which they also discussed with the VEC member.

This formed the basic structure of all three interventions. The first intervention stopped at this point. The key additional element in the second intervention was that villagers also generated their own information about children’s learning outcomes. As already mentioned, it was clear from the baseline survey that a large fraction of children currently 8