Continuing with its past trend, M-CRIL has pioneered rating of Affordable Private Schools (APS) in collaboration with Gray Matters Capital Foundation. Gray Matters Capital Foundation is a charitable arm of Gray Ghost Ventures, a social investment company that seeks to invest in visionary people, with an emphasis on microfinance and education. The rich experience of financial ratings for over 12 years, provides M-CRIL with the right platform to develop cost effective and sustainable rating tool to help parents, school leaders, regulators, investors, donors and education service providers better assess schools and the quality of education.

Access to quality education can provide new opportunities and significantly improve lives of those at the bottom of the pyramid. Many countries are facing severe problems with their government-run education system due to limited resources and multiple layers of bureaucracy resulting in ineffective learning environments. As a result, privately owned schools for low-income families have been started by educational entrepreneurs.

In the Affordable Private School (APS) market, there is a healthy tension between revenue and learning outcomes. There is a need to strengthen the ecosystem around the emerging affordable private school sector to ensure that schools have access to affordable tools and resources that allow them to offer quality education in a sustainable manner. With a quest to keep learning at the forefront of the business model, M-CRIL believes that quality is a key driver of viability.

Currently, this service is in its pilot phase and the pilot visit for the ten schools is complete.
The rating tool covers:

• Quality of teaching and the learning environment
  
• Family/community engagement with the school
  
• Management of the school
  
• Financial sustainability
  
• Infrastructure development
  
  

The rating methodology would primarily include focus group discussion with stakeholders including parents and teachers, analysis of operational and financial data, testing the learning levels amongst students, assessing the teachers based on a written test and a classroom observation.



M-CRIL has always taken the initiative to develop and offer new product and services in order to promote the sectors needing a credible service to assess their efficacy as well as promote transparency. Though not a very formal form of financial intermediation, the Chit Fund is a means of serving large sections of society who wish to borrow as well as save. The Chit Fund sector in India has considerable potential but has not been given its due place as a provider of financial services. The Chit Fund industry is regulated by the Registrar of Chit Funds at the State level. However the whole regulatory mechanism is complex and confusing, which makes the Chit Funds wary and apprehensive, leading to further lack of transparency.