Estructura básica de la composición

Wood and Antonowicz (2011) provide some insights in the effectiveness of the role of school management committees and the budget tracking and monitoring via score cards or children’s monitoring, for participatory monitoring and social accountability in schools.

4.4.3.4.1. Role of School Management Committees

Literature provides several examples of increased transparency as a result of parental involvement with the membership of the school management committees (SMCs). The SMCs have the responsibility for the school planning, school budgeting and finances and its positions are usually filled with the head teacher, parents and community members. It is important to keep the balance between the powers of the SMCs members, in some cases, the head teacher dominated and rarely gave in sights in the finances. Thus, the effectiveness of an SMC depends on the participations rights and varies per region. Also, more committees need to be established as so far, they are not yet in place throughout the whole country.

The occupation of ISIS and an insufficient educational infrastructure in Iraq caused by an unstable security situation has led to some regions lacking proper educational standards. The NGO Save the Children supported therefore schools in a southern Iraqi region and established at the same time SMCs in 40 Iraqi schools (Save the Children Japan, 2013). Moreover, schools that benefited from UNICEF support established SMCs or Parents Teacher Associations (PTA) in a total of 432 schools in 2016 (UNICEF, 2016). Especially PTAs have

41 a long tradition in Iraq and are required by law. They need to be reactivated further in the future to be certain that this useful body is fully active and effective in the management of the school and its relationship with the students (USAID, 2016). An overall data set about the establishments of SMCs or PTAs could not found; however, the existing support to establish or to reactivate those committees and associations should be ongoing since they constitute an important tool to involve the community and the parents.

4.4.3.4.2. Budget Tracking and Monitoring

The report of Wood and Antonowicz (2011) highlighted the importance of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and NGOs in budget tracking and monitoring. The World Bank (2012) indicated the importance of CSOs in the Iraqi context. It referred to a nascent, active CSO sector in Iraq, focussing mainly on governance, human rights, democracy and environment. Some CSOs are specialized in budgets, abuse of office and corruption. The Global Education Monitoring Report highlights the significance of the civil society as supporters of the work of internal and external auditors (Antoninis, 2017). A successful global example of civil society engagement is a project of the Commonwealth Education Fund, which enhanced local community participation to monitor education-related budgets and expenditures both on local and national level. Tools and procedures have been developed such as working in groups to avoid bribes (Wood & Antonowicz, 2011). The report of the Commonwealth Education Fund (2013) layed out the different levels of possibilities to involve the civil society in budget tracking or monitoring. Hereby, the civil society can be influential in the decision- making process or at the final expenditure, controlling for the proper use of public money.

In Iraq, grass root data on the activities of CSOs in Iraq in regard to specific budget tracking and monitoring activities could not be identified; therefore, a specific analysis is not possible. Withal, the Global Partnership for Education, a fund for education in developing countries, could support the Iraqi government in the implementation of SDG4. Currently, Iraq is not a member in this multi-stakeholder platform (Global Partnership for Education, 2018). There is a need for the availability of data in this sector, right now, as the influence of the CSOs in Iraq in regard to budget tracking and monitoring cannot be assessed.

4.4.3.4.2.1 Score Cards and Children’s Monitoring

Community score cards or report cards are considered to be a flexible and useful tool to raise awareness in the communities and identifying possible mismanagement. Hereby, the beneficiaries of the public services are reporting on the current status of the delivery.

In several countries, community score cards have been successfully used, monitoring public services in general, specific sectors (e.g. education or/and health) or in specific areas

42 such as textbook distribution. There has been evidence of the application in India, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Ghana, Armenia, and Congo among others (Labrecque & Batonon, 2015; Wood & Antonowicz, 2011). In Iraq, no data about the application of score cards was found. In any case, the use of score cards in a fragile country like Congo can give insights for possible application strategies in Iraq. Hereby, Congo’s population has limited access to information and hence, lack understanding as to what rights and responsibilities they have in regard to public services. Moreover, the accountability between service providers and service users is weak and the voice of citizens in service delivery is rarely heard (Labrecque & Batonon, 2015). These characteristics also fit the Iraqi context. The project improved access to services as well as, the population’s understanding of their own role in the education and health sector and increased the cooperation between service providers and users (Labrecque & Batonon, 2015).

Concluding, information about Iraq’s implementation of score cards could not been found, and one can therefore, assume that they have not been implemented. The Congolese application could be used as a model to develop an approach for the fragile context of Iraq. Children’s monitoring can be a promising tool in overseeing the school management. A successful case study in Uganda, proved the positive effect on the decline of teacher absenteeism or the reporting of corruption (Anyuru, 2006). Similar to the community score cards, specific data on the country level could not been identified for Iraq. Government and civil society are recommended to engage with the method of children’s monitoring.