A sustainable decision-making framework for school consolidation policy

India has a large number of schools to ensure good accessibility for students even in sparsely populated regions. However, in publicly funded education systems, governments need to address the trade-off between accessibility and resources for desired amenities in many schools. Over the last few years, several state governments in India have consolidated schools. School consolidation is the process of closing some existing schools and reinstating their operations in other functioning, appropriately located schools, without opening any new schools. Within a state or even within a district, different regions have specific requirements based on enrolment and the spatial distribution of schools. Hence, the one-size-fits-all approach of a single optimization model to consolidate schools may not provide acceptable solutions for all. The current study proposes and analyses several approaches to school consolidation decision-making that consider the stakeholders' needs. The aim is to provide tractable models based on median and coverage principles to help formulate sustainable school consolidation policies. Further improvements in the policies adopted by different states can be achieved using these models. The results of the case study indicate that utilization remains unaffected with the addition of accessibility requirements, and transfer outside the administrative boundaries yields better results in terms of additional travel distance and number of schools closed. The models can also be applied in several other service facility merger contexts with minor alterations.