Jan 2017 - May 2022

Location(s): Haryana, India and UK

Haryana, a northern Indian state, experiences significant gender-based practices that affect the ability of young people to access and remain within the education system, and to progress into higher education. This project, funded by Fair Chance Foundation (FCF Project), sought to determine the gendered factors that contribute to educational success for young people in Haryana. It considered gendered social relations and gender differences in choices, obstacles and opportunities for young people as they progress through the education system, and how these factors affect their ability to make informed choices in relation to accessing HE.

The project adopted:

• an evolutionary research design, building upon the results of each phase to develop the next;
• a collaborative approach through working with, and learning from, the India based project partners and scholars within the project consultative group;
• and a change model which sought to devise a programme of actions that could contribute to positive social change.

Phase 1 revealed that in Haryana young women and men who had accessed HE in government colleges identified their family as a key factor, and the home as a key space, where educational decisions were made and supported. We found that there was very limited understanding in the existing literature on how educational decisions leading to HE were made within families.

Thus, Phase 2 explored the social and family background of this cohort of students in more depth, to establish how educational decision making was undertaken within families.

Phase 3 established that there is a limited culture of formal HE outreach for access within government colleges, which caters specifically for students from marginalised backgrounds. There are no formal government policies which support institutional level initiatives relating to active outreach for HE access but there was a willingness within colleges to engage in forms of active outreach for HE access.

Finally, Phase 4 (the impact and dissemination phase) developed with collaborators a Policy Brief containing a range of policy suggestions, which was endorsed by relevant regional and national actors and an Outreach Activity Resource, a practical guide to holding college ‘taster days’ (open days) which was successfully piloted in three government colleges.

We facilitated three impact events hosted by some of our project partners and involved a number of local and national academic and education policy makers. These gained support for outreach from local and national actors and developed leadership in outreach for access at the district, state, and national levels.