4.7 School-Based Management and
Decentralization
Related to the issue of teacher recruitment, deployment and evaluation is the role of school-based management (SBM) at the secondary level. This is a particularly compelling topic given the need to address access, quality and equity concerns simultaneously, not sequentially, at the secondary level. SBM typically involves the transfer of authority for a range of activities, including budget allocation; hiring and firing of teaching and non-teaching personnel; procurement of textbooks and other learning materials; infrastructure improvement; and monitoring of teacher and student performance.
Internationally, SBM has flourished over the last twenty years in both OECD and developing countries, largely as a means to improve quality, and there is an extensive literature on it. While the evidence regarding the results of SBM in terms of learning outcomes is mixed (see Box 4.3), there is a strong rationale for it insofar as it tightens and renders more transparent the relationship between the service provider (the school) and the client (parents/students). Furthermore, in the context of efforts to improve school quality and learning outcomes, it places the school clearly as the agent of change, for which it is responsible and accountable to both parents and policymakers. Short of SBM, decentralization of key resource allocation and administrative decisions to lower education administration levels can also increase alignment with local needs for more efficient, better targeted resource allocations to improve quality.
It is an irony of the Indian secondary system that most states require privately-managed schools (aided and unaided) to have school-level management committees (composed of the head teacher, parents, teachers, etc.), while public schools are not so obligated. Government schools are controlled at the state and district levels, with little community involvement. In this sense, private schools are more accountable to the public than are government schools.57 It is important to point out
that this is very different from policies at the elementary
57 The exception to this are the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS)
schools, which are operated by the national (not state) government. KVS has proposed school management committees which can generate additional resources and appoint teachers on an ad hoc basis, while devolving to the principal financial responsibilities and authority to hire support service personnel.
education level, where Village Education Committees in public schools are standard.
In government and private aided secondary schools, teacher qualifications are fixed, with little or no involvement of school principals in teacher recruitment. The main difference is that teachers in the private aided system are appointed to specific schools rather than to the system overall, so that there is at least the presumption of increased teacher accountability (if not the reality). The experience of SSA at the elementary level with empowerment of Village Education Committees is certainly instructive. VECs manage funds from SSA for infrastructure improvements, purchases of teaching and learning materials, and are charged with verifying teacher and student attendance. Transferring funds to the people who will own the assets which are financed has been a positive experience. The recently completed Implementation Completion Report for SSA I concluded that the capacity of these institutions has been strengthened through the key role they have played in community mobilization, and in implementing civil works. In addition, VECs in some states have played a role in recruitment and/or monitoring of teachers, or running of alternative schools, although in general they have yet to play the desired role of deeper community participation and engagement in schools. This point to the importance of training of VEC members on roles, responsibilities and mechanisms to ensure quality in schools. In addition, recent evaluations of VECs in Uttar Pradesh (Pandey 2007 and Khemani, 2007) show that such training can increase the likelihood of parent and community engagement to some degree, but that the impact on student learning has been very limited so far, although it may be too soon to expect any results.
Compared to the primary level, it is more difficult at the secondary level for parents to judge the quality of schools, to compare them, or advise them. There are greater gaps between the average parent’s education and that of secondary teachers and principals, a secondary school’s structure and organization is more complex, and secondary schools are more “regionally monopolistic” (fewer of them, less choice) (World Bank, 2005a). All of these factors increase the challenge of improving accountability through parental and community involvement, but they do not offset the potential benefits of SBM.
4.8 Secondary Education Management
Information System (SEMIS)
At central levels there is a real lack of timely information regarding secondary education. This void exists from basic input indicators such as number and deployment of teachers, availability of learning materials and conditions of infrastructure, to output indicators such as enrollment, repetition, dropout and examination pass rates by management type and social group. (While MHRD’s “Selected Education Statistics” produces some of this information, it is released with at least a two-year delay.) Key financial information at state, district and school levels is also not collected.
School mapping, which juxtaposes the geographic distribution of the secondary level target age group with available infrastructure, is not carried out, so that central
and state officials cannot maximize efficiency when deciding where to local new schools or build additional classrooms.
The vacuum of basic timely information at the secondary level prevents the preparation of indices (similar to the Education Development Index at the elementary level) which reveal state- and district- level performance. In addition, it prevents MHRD from being able to make strategic and tactical resource allocation decisions on a needs-basis in a timely fashion. Finally, cross-referencing of inputs, outputs, resource allocation and examination results at the district level is not possible in any systematic fashion, so MHRD is hard pressed to push for accountability, much less quality improvements.
By contrast, great strides have been made in all states in the use of household surveys and the District Information Recent analytical work by the World Bank assessing the impact of school-based management around the world since 1995 identified many methodological issues which suggest caution in drawing definitive conclusions. The sample of carefully documented, rigorous impact evaluations is quite small. Nevertheless, it is possible to provide some important findings about the impact of SBM, based on the more rigorous analyses:
Some studies found that SBM policies actually changed the dynamics of the school, either because parents got more involved or because teachers’ actions changed (King and Ozler 1998; Jimenez and Sawada 1999; and Gunnarsson et al. 2004).
Several studies presented evidence that SBM had had a positive impact on repetition rates, failure rates, and, to a lesser extent, dropout rates (di Gropello and Marshall 2005; Jimenez and Sawada 2003; Gertler el al. 2006, Paes de Barros and Mendonce 1998; and Skoufias and Shapiro 2006).
The studies assessing impact of SBM on standardized test scores presented mixed evidence (Jimenez and Sawada 2003; King and Ozler 1998; and Sawada and Ragatz 2005).
Research in the United States suggests that SBM reform needs at least five years of implementation before any fundamental changes can be observed at the school level, and eight years before changes can be seen in test scores.
Finally, there is a lack of cost-benefit analyses of SBM. While SBM may involve political costs and administrative expenses for capacity-building, SBM is essentially just a change in the locus of decision-making and does not require any increase recurrent funding. It can be considered a very low-cost intervention in financial terms.
Source: “What do we know about school-based management?” The World Bank, 2008.
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