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| The
Impact of Innovations |
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|
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| Having
examined the nature of community partnerships in a range of
settings, it is important to turn to the impact of innovations
in this domain. Consideration of durable models in conjunction
with innovations permits identification of lessons for the continuing
challenge to secure adequate quantity and appropriate quality
of education for all. |
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| This section
considers impact under five sub-headings. It begins with recruitment
and retention of pupils, which is a major part of the quantitative
challenge. It then turns to the recruitment, salaries and monitoring
of teachers, which are important dimensions in the qualitative
challenge. The inputs of pupils and teachers, when combined
with curriculum, books and other inputs, lead to outputs in
the shape of academic and other aspects of educational achievement
which are considered in the next section. The two remaining
sections focus on equity and on political dimensions. |
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| Recruitment,
Retention and Attendance of Pupils |
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| Clear evidence
shows in many contexts that involvement of communities in the
operation of schools can help in the recruitment, retention
and attendance of pupils. Schools run by NGOs have their own
missions to serve target populations for religious, philanthropic
and other reasons; and schools run by governments are assisted
in their outreach by community members on their school committees.
Community members commonly have deeper understanding of the
circumstances of particular families, of relationships between
individuals, and of micro-politics. Also, in settings where
turnover of teachers is considerable, community members on school
committees may provide an important element of continuity. |
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|
These
general observations may be substantiated by specific examples
in different countries:
India.
One model in India is the Shiksha Karmi Program in rural and
remote parts of Rajasthan (Rajagopal & Sharma 1999). This
initiative was launched in 1987 with the goal of revitalizing
educational processes and extending outreach. The program
identified and trained volunteers in village communities which
had difficulty in attracting other teachers because of either
remoteness or lack of educated individuals. Since 1991 the
program has also opened new schools, and by 1997 it served
2,000 villages and provided schooling for 157,300 children.
Every year, the persons in charge of the schools work with
community members to conduct surveys of the children who are
and are not attending the schools. Children are recruited,
and the teachers work hard to ensure that children stay in
school once they have been enrolled. Of course this is not
always straightforward. Rajagopal & Sharma point out (1999,
p.68) that "caste/class and village power dynamics do often
come into play", with negative as well as positive consequences.
However, the program has had major successes as a result of
the partnerships which have been built with government, professional
groups and community organizations. The program includes clearly-stated
expectations of teachers and their behavior, a strong feedback
system for teachers' continuous improvement, a career track
for teachers, a firm belief that all children have an innate
ability to learn. This philosophy and the demonstrated action
have elicited a strong community response.
Bangladesh.
A comparable model, which has grown much larger, is that of
the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC). As noted
at the beginning of this study, BRAC schools serve 1.2 million
children. The children are all from disadvantaged backgrounds,
and most live in rural areas (Nath et al. 1999). BRAC screens
entrants through careful surveys to ensure that they come
from poor families who are not normally reached by the conventional
system. Rugh & Bossert (1998, p.68) have stated that "BRAC's
programs unquestionably lead to the increased educational
participation of children in terms of enrollment, attendance,
and completion".
Fiji
Islands. The context and system in Fiji Islands is rather
different from these models in India and Bangladesh. The model
in that country is of community operation through village
committees, churches, cultural organizations and other bodies
of almost all primary schools in the country (Tavola 2000,
p.13). The government coordinates the schools, sets guidelines
and conditions for their operation, and pays the teachers;
but the communities provide the land, the buildings and much
of the equipment, and also enroll the pupils. Some school
committees are very active not only in recruiting pupils but
also in ensuring attendance.
Madagascar.
Parents' Associations exist in all of Madagascar's primary
schools. The associations operate as interlocutors between
the schools and the communities, and help both to recruit
pupils and to make schools more attractive. At the primary
level, about a quarter of pupils attend private schools which
receive subventions from the government. In the mid-1990s,
households and communities contributed over a quarter of the
costs of primary and secondary education, thus permitting
a considerably greater total volume of education than would
have been possible had everything relied on the state (Rahaririaka
& Péano 1999). A system of contracts between government and
communities launched in 1994 had an even greater impact than
anticipated. Between 1994 and 1997, nationwide primary school
enrollments increased by 32 per cent. This was achieved by
a 21 per cent increase in ordinary schools, but a 44 per cent
increase in community-partnership schools. In 1997/98, enrollments
in the latter represented 37 per cent of the national total
(Tilahimena 1999).
Ethiopia.
Revitalization of schools has been achieved through a project
which has injected funds, provided training, and raised morale.
Particular attention has focused on enrollment of girls. Rowley
(1999, p.18) has highlighted settings in which community leaders
have fined parents 50 Birr (US$6.60) if their children do
not attend school. Retention of pupils has also been increased
by quality improvements.
|
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| These examples
are from diverse contexts, but illustrate the general point
that community partnerships commonly help significantly in the
recruitment, retention and attendance of pupils. |
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|
| Teachers
and their Conditions of Service |
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|
| The issues
surrounding employment of teachers, and their conditions of
service, are more complex. Again it is necessary to distinguish
between schools which are primarily operated by governments
but with community participation, and schools which are primarily
operated by communities albeit perhaps with some government
supervision and support. |
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| In most
systems which are primarily operated by governments, the authorities
are anxious to retain control over recruitment, deployment,
remuneration and discipline of teachers. Their chief motivation
is a concern with equity in distribution of resources. In turn,
this concern may be linked to issues of social cohesion and
national unity. This is among the reasons why the government
of Kenya merged the categories of government and self-help harambee
secondary schools in the mid-1980s (Rugh & Bossert 1998). In
Bhutan, the government has permitted and encouraged establishment
of community schools at the junior primary level, but from the
outset has retained control over teachers salaries and conditions
of service (Bray 1996c); and Colombia's escuela nueva, which
is explained in more detail below, is basically an alternative
within rather than outside the formal state education system
(McGinn 1998). |
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|
| Government
concern for equity sometimes leads to ambiguities and conflicts.
For example, after Namibia's independence in 1990, the government
placed considerable stress on community involvement in schools,
in order both to foster democratic processes and to improve
schools through community inputs. However, because the government
felt that it had the political and moral imperative to promote
equity, checks to community authority were maintained or were
enacted to prevent racially- or ethnically-based hiring of teachers.
Consequently, school boards were told that they had the right
to choose teachers but regional officials sometimes refused
to accept the communities' choices (Wolf et al. 1999, p.29).
This tension between decentralization and centralization proved
difficult to resolve, and seemed likely to be a continued feature. |
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|
| Elsewhere,
government-run education systems suffer from poor quality and
inertia. This is especially obvious in parts of India, and has
been graphically illustrated by the Public Report on Basic Education
(PROBE). The research team reported some bright spots but also
many negative ones. The PROBE report added (1999, p.57) that,
aside from attracting poorly-motivated individuals, the teaching
profession may actually deter those who have a genuine attraction
to teaching as a pedagogical or social endeavor; and even if
teachers commence their work with some motivation, many of them
lose it over time. |
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|
| It is in
such circumstances that partnership with communities, and particularly
with NGOs, seems an attractive way to revitalize education systems.
India can in fact report some success in this, at least in some
areas (PROBE 1999, p.106-114; Rajagopal & Sharma 1999); and
parallel successes have been evident in parts of Pakistan (Baqir
1998). However, patterns are complex, and few formulae are applicable
to all circumstances (Box 8). |
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|
Box
8: Patterns of Teacher-Parent Relations in India
The
PROBE report (1999, pp.65-66) contained the following
observations about teacher-parent relations:
Parents
and teachers have a tendency to blame each other for
the failures of the schooling system. This situation
may sound like the death-knell of teacher-parent relations.
However, some mutual criticism is quite natural in this
context, and does not necessarily rule out practical
cooperation. In fact, given the current state of affairs,
it would be quite worrying if parents were full of praise
for teachers or vice versa. Their respective demands
do have a positive role to play in the improvement of
the school system…
The nature of teacher-parent relations varies a great
deal between different villages. In a majority of villages,
there is active cooperation. In Khurd (Rajasthan), for
instance, the teacher has won the appreciation of the
village community for his punctuality and sense of duty,
setting in motion a virtuous circle of good will. At
the other extreme, there are cases of palpable tension
between teachers and the parental community. This applies
in Bisariya (Bihar), where parents ended up appointing
a retired teacher to help in the local school, deserted
by its own headteacher. Antagonism is also the norm
with non-functional schools, which reflect a fundamental
breakdown of the teacher-parent relation. An intermediate
pattern arises when teachers are identified with specific
factions within the village. This is particularly frequent
in villages with sharp divisions of caste and class….
Perhaps the most common pattern is one of scant interaction
between parents and teachers. Parents, even if unhappy,
see little scope to influence the teachers. The latter,
for their part, have little interest in active interaction
with parents, or may be satisfied with selective interaction.
Two-thirds of the headteachers we interviewed felt that
the attitude of parents towards the school was 'helpful',
but what they understood by this reflected low expectations
of parental cooperation: asked to elaborate, the most
frequent comment was that parents helped by sending
their children to school regularly. Less than 30 per
cent of the headteachers reported that they had asked
for any specific help from the parents during the preceding
12 months and obtained a 'favorable' response. One both
sides, inertia is the dominant attitude.
|
|
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| Moreover,
teachers who benefit from loose administration and poor supervision
of course do not welcome tighter systems of accountability through
communities. They are especially resentful when they consider
communities to lack the professional skills and insights necessary
to make appropriate interventions. India's Central Advisory
Board of Education (CABE) particularly cautioned (1993, p.13)
that: |
| |
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| The past
experience indicates that the teaching community has not always
been happy in its interaction with the Panchayati Raj bodies.
Issues relating to recruitment and transfers seem to have created
misunderstanding between these bodies and the teaching community.
|
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|
| With this
in mind, the CABE suggested that the state would need to lay
down clear guidelines with respect to various aspects of personnel
management, particularly norms for posting and transfer of teachers.
However, even when clear guidelines exist, potential for friction
remains. |
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|
| One ingredient
in this potential for friction is the question of teachers'
salaries. The 1980s and 1990s brought considerable advocacy
of community partnership as a way to reduce teacher costs. This
was a major motivation for the reform in Papua New Guinea, mentioned
above, which separated elementary from primary education and
made the elementary grades community-based; and it has been
a major motivation for a similar reform envisaged in neighboring
Vanuatu (Vanuatu 1999). In China, community-employed minban
teachers have generally been paid less than their government-employed
counterparts; and when salaries were raised through government
subsidies and more standardized conditions of service, a new
category of community-employed supplementary daike teachers
emerged (China 2000, p.55). Likewise in Mali, much of the attractiveness
to the government of the Kolondieba community schools project
arose from the "vastly lower salaries paid to community school
teachers", who received between 8 and 12 per cent of the salaries
of their government counterparts (Muskin 1997, p.51). Under
such circumstances, it is little surprise that at least some
teachers and their unions view proposals for community partnership
with suspicion, fearing that their status and conditions of
service will be eroded. |
| |
|
| However,
community partnership can of course have the opposite effect
of increasing the incomes of teachers. As noted above, in many
settings, teachers receive contributions from their communities
either in cash or in housing, food, labor or other forms. Further,
teachers' unions which are concerned about employment may recognize
that community partnership expands the volume of education,
and thus increases the number of jobs for teachers. Yet community-run
schools are much less likely to offer teachers job security.
Only the best-organized communities can embark even on medium-term
(let alone long-term) plans; and the financial circumstances
of communities commonly fluctuate according to the initiative,
enthusiasm and abilities of particular individuals who occupy
leadership positions. Moncada-Davidson (1995, p.67) has pointed
out that in El Salvador, the absence of job security has lowered
the average quality and performance of EDUCO teachers because
positions of public school personnel are considered much more
attractive. |
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|
| Many governments
and NGOs make a special effort to appoint teachers from within
local communities on the assumptions that these teachers will
relate to their communities more effectively than outsiders
would, and that community monitoring will keep the teachers
accountable and dedicated. This has generally been demonstrated
in India's Shiksha Karmi program (Rajagopal & Sharma 1999, p.59).
With reference to government schools, however, researchers contributing
to the PROBE report (1999, p.98) indicated that they "found
no evidence that teachers posted in their own village perform
better than others". Indeed, the report observed, locally-employed
teachers may lack the neutrality of outsiders and be associated
with particular factions within their villages (Box 8). Thus,
it cannot be assumed that local recruitment of teachers is necessarily
better than external recruitment. |
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|
| Finally,
one particular domain in which communities need inputs from
government is in the training of teachers. While communities
may be able to recruit and pay teachers, only the largest and
best organized non-government bodies are able to provide pre-service
and in-service training. In almost any model for educational
provision, this domain seems to need at least some provision
by the government. |
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| Educational
Achievement |
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|
One of
the three volumes which synthesized the roundtable themes
of the Jomtien World Conference (Fordham 1992, p.37) made
a link between community partnership and educational outcomes:
Changes
in the way schools are administered, especially if they
make clear efforts to relate to the local community, can
change perceptions about the school's interaction between
the school and the community. A surprising result is that
the positive ideology that is engendered is more important
to educational success than the economic resources provided
to the school by the community.
|
| This type
of assertion seems intuitively true. Indeed the "surprising
result" is perhaps not so surprising when given further thought.
Community partnership may improve the accountability and transparency
of school operations, and can certainly provide support for
pupils. The impact of these factors is difficult to prove empirically
because many other factors affect achievement and evaluations
cannot easily isolate the specific effects of community partnership.
Also, researchers are not in full agreement on the best ways
to define and measure educational achievement. Nevertheless,
educational achievement is so important that efforts have been
made to secure research evidence in a number of contexts. |
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|
| One setting
in which this has been investigated is Kenya's Mombasa School
Improvement Programme (MSIP). Evaluation of the MSIP noted that
during the life of the project, the Mombasa District results
on national primary school examinations improved dramatically
(Anderson & Nderitu 1999, p.118). The evaluators did not fully
ascribe the improvement to the inputs of the project, but did
consider the MSIP, and especially the community links, to have
contributed significantly. |
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|
| Elsewhere
in Africa, the impact of community-school models which represent
alternatives to the dominant school systems has been assessed
in Mali. Muskin (1999) has evaluated the schools operated by
the US-based NGO, Save the Children. The initial project design
emphasized vernacular instruction and a three-year cycle which
was expected to be terminal for the pupils. However, the terminal
nature of this model was changed a few years after the project
was launched, so that pupils could proceed to upper primary
education and French-medium secondary schools. Muskin's evaluation
found (p.62) that the quality of basic education provided by
the project schools matched that in the government schools.
Arithmetic scores were on a par; and while pupils in the community
schools had lower test scores in local knowledge, their scores
in reading and writing in the vernacular exceeded the French-language
literacy scores of their counterparts in the government schools.
|
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|
| However,
the Save the Children community schools project is relatively
young, and has received a level of international attention and
external assistance which could not be proportionately sustained
if the scale were greatly increased. Moreover, close examination
reveals that, despite the emphasis on communities in the name
of the project, the actual nature of community involvement has
been quite limited. The community management aspect consisted
of construction of schools with roofs, windows and furniture
provided by the donor, the composition and regular operation
of a school committee, and the payment (at the equivalent of
only US$6 per month) of one teacher per school for the morning
session and another for the afternoon session. The limited volume
of community inputs to some extent resulted from the design
of the project. The schools were located in a rural area which
had shown little interest in the government-run system, and
one major goal of the project was to stimulate demand. With
that in mind, the NGO made substantial inputs in teaching materials
and equipment. Indeed Tietjen (1999, pp.70-71) commented that
"the funding formula used by the Save the Children model seems
to define - whether or not intentionally - the community members
more as recipients than partners and owners of the school".
It is thus questionable how far the academic results could be
attributed to community involvement as opposed to other factors. |
| |
|
| A similar
comment may be made about the escuela nueva of Colombia, mentioned
above. This model has a longer history, since it originated
in a 1975 government-initiated reform which targeted rural children,
used multigrade teaching, and aimed at a student-centered approach.
The program was expanded, and by the early 1990s embraced 18,000
rural schools. Community inputs are chiefly in the domain of
curriculum and outreach. For example, students undertake field
trips which encourage appreciation of their local communities
and take advantage of local resources to make students' learning
more relevant. Also, the original escuela nueva design envisaged
that at the beginning of the school year teachers would visit
the homes of all their pupils. Comparison with conventional
schools has also shown higher levels of community participation
in such activities as adult education, agricultural extension,
athletic competitions, health campaigns and community celebrations
(Rugh & Bossert 1998, p.108). One evaluation of escuela nueva
institutions which had been in existence for five years or more
found that their students scored higher in third grade Spanish
and mathematics, and also in fifth grade Spanish (but not mathematics)
than students in the conventional system (Psacharopoulos et
al. 1993). Escuela nueva students also scored higher on civic
and self-esteem tests in both grades. The fact that the escuela
nueva model had been implemented first in the most disadvantaged
schools with fewer teachers increased the significance of the
results. McGinn (1998, pp.43-46) also reported positive evaluation
data. However, it is difficult strongly to ascribe positive
results to community participation. The main focus of the study
by Psacharopoulos et al. (1993) was multigrade teaching rather
than community partnership, and McGinn (1998) indicates that
links between schools and communities were in practice very
varied. |
| |
|
| Data are
also available on El Salvador's EDUCO model. Jimenez & Sawada
(1999, p.439) found that average scores in standardized tests
of mathematics and language indicated poorer performance among
EDUCO students than among their counterparts in rural traditional
schools. However, they added, this was not surprising given
the fact that EDUCO students came from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Allowance for this fact could show that the scores of students
in the two systems were equivalent. Moreover, Jimenez & Sawada
did indicate (p.440) that one particular element of community
participation in the EDUCO schools had a clear effect. This
was the monitoring of teacher behavior by the parents and their
representatives. Sawada (1999, p.29) observed that "teacher
effort … in EDUCO schools with the high intensity of community
participation is consistently better than in traditional schools".
More active monitoring of teachers has also been reported in
Nicaragua (Rivarola & Fuller 1999, p.515). |
| |
|
| Bangladesh's
BRAC model also deserves mention again. According to Nath et
al. (1999, p.20), children in BRAC schools generally perform
at an equivalent level to their counterparts in government schools
in reading and numeracy. In life skills and writing, the BRAC
students may perform better. Again, this seems to be testimony
to the power of at least some types of alternative schooling.
The BRAC model is especially important because, in contrast
to the community schools in Mali, it has been sustained over
time and has gone to scale. Again, however, the achievements
may reflect the good organization of the NGO that runs BRAC
rather than the specific community links of the model. |
| |
|
| Moreover,
in some settings community initiatives may lead to inferior
outcomes. This is especially likely to be the case when communities
recruit their own teachers but suffer severe financial constraints
in doing so. Kenya's harambee secondary schools were well known
to produce inferior products until the government moved to nationalize
the system in the 1980s (Lillis & Ayot 1988). Questions also
arise about the community-run elementary schools in Papua New
Guinea and Vanuatu; and community schools which multiplied in
Zambia during the 1990s similarly had to struggle on very meager
resource bases (Kelly 1998). These examples again stress the
need for government partnership with communities, so that communities
are not left entirely to struggle on their own. |
| |
| In summary,
when other factors are equal it seems very likely that community
inputs to schools will promote learning outcomes. To supplement
the studies quoted above, the finding of a 26-country study
conducted under the umbrella of the International Association
for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement may be noted (Postlethwaite
& Ross 1992, p.32). The degree of parental cooperation had the
strongest link with school effectiveness among all 56 indicators
selected from the 300 initially examined. Community links can
improve the relevance of schooling, and school-home liaison
can assist with pupils' homework, emotional stability and other
important factors. However, many other important ingredients
are also involved. Community partnership cannot by itself work
miracles; but it is certainly important. |
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|
| Equity
Tensions |
| |
|
| Community
inputs of certain kinds and in certain places can of course
help reduce social disparities. In general, however, community
inputs by themselves are much more likely to increase disparities.
Where community initiatives imply self-help, the communities
which are most likely to help themselves are those which are
already advantaged. Historically, recognition of this fact was
among the major justifications for increasing the role of the
state and for reducing the roles of communities in education.
Equity issues may have many dimensions. The most obvious spatial
ones are regional and rural/urban. Other dimensions are socio-economic,
ethnic, racial and gender. Each deserves some comment here. |
| |
|
| Beginning
with regional differences, Kenya is one country in which at
least some disadvantaged districts have remained disadvantaged
because they have had low incomes in the first place and therefore
found it difficult to embark on self-help (Mwiria 1990; Rugh
& Bossert 1998). Similar problems have been encountered elsewhere.
In China, for example, conditions along the east coast are markedly
different from those in the western interior (Lewin & Wang 1994).
In some societies, regional variations reflect cultural variations.
In Nigeria and Tanzania, regional imbalances have less to do
with the distribution of natural resources than with the fact
that peoples of certain ethnic groups have stronger traditions
of community organization than do others (Igwe 1988; Samoff
1990). |
| |
|
| A variation
on this problem experienced in some countries is of racial inequalities.
In Zimbabwe, which during the late colonial era had suffered
from racial segregation, great emphasis was placed on community
financing during the 1980s as a way to generate resources and
expand educational provision. However, the policy operated differentially.
As recounted by Maravanyika (1995, p.12): |
| |
|
| Schools
in former white areas established Management Agreements with
government. These enabled Management Committees to levy parents
so that the schools could buy additional school equipment and
other teaching resources or recruit additional staff to reduce
the government stipulated teacher/pupil ratio which some white
parents considered too high for effective teaching, or introduced
specialist subjects not covered by government such as music
and computing. In short Management Committees were concerned
with maintaining former colonial privileges and standards. |
| |
|
| Maravanyika
pointed out that the large amounts charged by the Management
Committees were generally out of the reach of the ordinary black
parents, and that the method of financing perpetuated racial
inequalities. |
| |
|
| Most societies
also suffer from rural-urban disparities in educational provision.
The tendency is for inequalities to be compounded rather than
reduced by government policies. Because it is usually more difficult
to foster community initiatives in urban than in rural areas,
governments commonly provide extensive resources for the urban
schools while expecting the rural ones to help themselves (Lee
2000). Urban residents are less likely to identify themselves
as part of tight social groups, and they are more likely to
have multiple commitments which obstruct extensive participation
in school affairs. However, urban communities may be able more
easily to raise cash resources, and may have better educated
and more articulate school-committee members. |
| |
|
| Nevertheless,
the schools operated by some types of community are more likely
to be located in towns than in rural areas. The Independent
Chinese Schools in Malaysia are in this category, chiefly because
the Chinese communities have always been concentrated in urban
areas (Tan 1988). One effect of this form of community activity,
therefore, has been to extend the imbalance in facilities between
rural and urban areas - a fact which has become of added significance
when substantial numbers of non-Chinese families have also chosen
to enroll in the schools. |
| |
|
| Further
inequalities may be socio-economic. Again, relatively prosperous
groups are likely to be in a better position than impoverished
groups to form partnerships with governments. Moreover schools,
like other types of projects, many be vulnerable to exploitation
by the better-off classes. As observed by Bhatnagar & Williams
(1992, p.4): |
| |
|
| Sometimes
resources for development can be captured by local elites and
used primarily for their own benefit rather than [that of] the
intended beneficiaries. This happens because local elites usually
have advantageous ties to national elites, because they have
access to and information about resource allocation procedures,
and because they can use threats and force against the disadvantaged. |
| |
|
| This type
of situation can arise in many parts of the world. It is particularly
obvious in less developed societies, but may also be a feature
in more developed ones. |
| |
|
| On the
other hand, governments may see community partnerships as a
way to serve groups which would otherwise be beyond the authorities'
reach. In Singapore, a Council on Education for Muslim Children,
better known as Mendaki, was founded in 1981. Almost all its
members were from the minority Malay racial group. The main
rationale for founding the association was to help the Malay
community catch up with the Chinese and Indians in educational
performance. Mendaki receives strong government support. Part
of the rationale for this was set out by Prime Minister Lee
Kuan Yew in 1982. "A government-run scheme," he pointed out
(quoted by Tan 1995, p.344), "cannot achieve a quarter of the
results of this voluntary, spontaneous effort by Malays/Muslims
to help themselves". Recognizing the limits of government actions,
he added: |
| |
|
| You can
better succeed because you will be more effective with Malay/Muslim
parents than government officers.... You can reach them through
their hearts, not just their minds. You have the motivation
and the dedication and commitment. This emotional/psychological
support can make a vast difference between a student who tries,
fails, and tries again, and another who fails and gives up. |
| |
|
| In this
example, the government has used partnership with a community
organization to reduce disparities. One irony, however, is that
the Mendaki lead was followed by establishment of parallel groups
for the Chinese, Indian and Eurasian groups, and disparities
between the groups have to some extent been maintained. |
| |
|
| Finally,
gender inequities must be considered. Once again, patterns may
be complex, for different communities may behave in different
ways. In many societies, parents who are forced to make a choice
are more likely to invest in the schooling of boys rather than
girls (Herz et al. 1991; Odaga & Heneveld 1995; Colclough et
al. 2000). This factor may be of considerable importance where
community financing requires payment of fees. Also, the fact
that many school committees are dominated by men may cause some
issues of importance to girls to be overlooked. One response,
as in India's Andhra Pradesh, has been to insist that committees
have at least one female member. Another response, followed
in Burkina Faso has been to encourage separate women's groups
to operate alongside and in coordination with school committees
to address the specific needs of girls (Coulibaly & Badini 1999).
Mothers' clubs which operate separately from school committees
are also an important feature in Fiji Islands (Tavola 2000). |
| |
|
|
In these
types of situation, the role for governments may be to operate
in partnership with community leaders to rectify imbalances
(Hartwell 1998). Two specific projects may be highlighted
in which governments have formed partnerships with communities
and with NGOs to tackle gender imbalances:
Pakistan.
In the western province of Balochistan, major strides have
been achieved through a Community Support Program launched
in 1990 (Bakhtiari et al. 1999; Baloch & Hussain 1999). Initially,
government and other personnel believed that parents were
resistant to girls' education. They have found that with the
right approaches, parents and communities can be not only
receptive but even enthusiastic. By 1999, over 1,300 schools
had been established with enrollments of 56,000 and community
partnerships which particularly served girls. Part of the
key was community selection of female teachers from their
own villages, and supervision of the schools by Village Education
Committees. Since most of the Village Education Committees
are dominated by men, many villages have established complementary
Women's Village Education Committees. Many NGOs in other parts
of Pakistan have comparable partnerships with the specific
goal of enhancing the education of girls (see e.g. Haque 1998;
Nizamani & Jamil 1999).
Egypt.
In 1992, a community-school project was initiated in the deprived
rural parts of Egypt's Upper Nile region (Zaalouk 1995). The
project brings together the government and several NGOs, and
is assisted by UNICEF. A related project received support
from the Canadian International Development Agency. Both projects
have targeted girls, and since 1995 they have been coordinated
by an Education Innovation Committee in the Ministry of Education.
According to UNICEF (1999b, p.51), "a movement is on its way,
with community schools viewed as a catalyst for social change
and personal transformation". By 1998, in three of the most
deprived governorates nearly 200 community schools had been
established. Their success in helping girls was particularly
noteworthy, though boys were recruited too. rships with communities
and with NGOs to tackle gender imbalances:
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| In summary,
by themselves community self-help initiatives are likely to
increase rather than decrease geographic and social disparities.
This is because the groups which are already advantaged are
in a better position to help themselves than are the groups
which are disadvantaged. This fact can be a justification for
direct government interventions for the disadvantaged groups.
However, these interventions are still more likely to succeed
if they take the form of partnerships with those groups. Thus
while governments need to monitor their partnership schemes
to ensure that scarce government resources are not chiefly being
devoted to groups which are already well-endowed, they should
also note that partnerships can be a powerful instrument for
reaching the disadvantaged. |
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Box
9: Encouraging Participation by the Poor
Participation
in educational activities requires energy, skills and
long-term vision. These qualities are not abundant among
the poor. Yet the poor are the principal unreached group
in the goal of education for all.
The
World Bank (1996) has considered this matter in its
Participation Sourcebook, which identifies ways to increase
participation in World Bank projects. One suggestion
(p.147) is that the poor should be given incentives
to participate. Partnership schemes can demonstrate
ways in which schools and their members can reach out
to serve the needs of the poor, as well as vice versa.
The
Participation Sourcebook also highlights the need to
understand informal community organizations. In a typical
poor community, the book suggests (p.152):
Some
of the most active community organizations are informal.
They are not listed in any documents, and they may
be unknown even to people familiar with the communities
(extension agents, local development agency staff,
and so forth). Learning about these groups entails
visiting the communities and talking with inhabitants
about the decision-making units present.
One recommended way to proceed is through simple 'institutional
mapping'. Local people are asked to identify the community
groups by drawing circles of differing sizes -- the
larger the circle the more important and influential
the institution it represents. The extent of shared
decision-making among groups can be represented by how
circles are placed in relation to one another: the closer
together and the more overlapping, the greater the degree
of interaction between the represented groups. These
graphics, sometimes called "chapati diagrams", have
proved effective in identifying informal groupings that
are important safety nets for poorer groups and for
revealing that some of the more obvious organizations
are actually quite weak.
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| Political
Dimensions |
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| The political
dimensions of community partnership are obviously considerable.
First, linking back to comments made at the beginning of this
study, is the large question about the role of the state in
education. The 1980s and 1990s brought a significant shift in
this domain worldwide (Taal 1993; Torres & Puiggrós 1995; Green
1997; Kitaev 1999), which both reflected and caused fundamental
political transitions. |
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| The notion
of partnership has a generally positive tone, suggesting that
the state and its partners work together in harmony. However,
this is clearly not a universal pattern. Some governments feel
threatened by community activity in the field of education,
and some communities resent what they see as continued state
dominance within partnerships. |
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The threats
arising from community activity may be linked to inequalities
of the type noted above. As pointed out by Molutsi (1993,
p.118):
Partners
often advance different agendas. They may emphasise local
needs very much at the expense of regional and national
needs. Inequality in the status of partners may also create
conflict and endless disputes which could easily retard
progress.
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| Alternatively,
threats to governments may arise from a feeling of inadequacy.
In Cameroon, for example, until the early 1980s Associations
des Parents d'Elèves (APEs) were outlawed because in the political
context they were considered potentially subversive (Boyle 1996,
p.618). However, financial crisis in that country, as in other
parts of the region, has required the state to accommodate APEs
and even to rely on them for important supplementary funding
(Tembon 1999). In some countries, APEs have grouped together
to form umbrella organizations which negotiate with their governments
and which are significant political forces. In these settings,
the power of the state is greatly weakened by the financial
constraints typical of contemporary times. |
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| In other
settings, the political threat may come not so much from parents'
bodies within public schools as from independent NGOs. As noted
above, Pakistan is among the countries in which NGOs working
in the education sector flourished during the 1990s. This was
in particularly sharp contrast to the pattern two decades earlier,
for in 1972 the government nationalized all schools. In 1979
this policy was reversed, and by 1990 5,000 NGOs were said to
be active in the education sector (Baqir 1998, p.178). As the
decade progressed, the number of NGOs and CBOs (Community Based
Organizations) continued to grow. The government welcomed the
fact that they helped bear the burden of education, but was
less enthusiastic about the fact that many NGOs were highly
critical of government performance. The facts that some NGOs
were badly run and that others were fronts for political activity
gave the authorities grounds for periodic crack-downs. In turn,
these measures stirred more political antagonism in some NGOs,
and made the situation more complex (Mumtaz 1997, p.187). |
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| In some
countries, school committees and other community bodies may
also be influenced by local and national political forces. This
was a major feature of Kenya's harambee movement during the
1960s and 1970s (Anderson 1973; Hill 1991), and to some extent
remains a feature in contemporary times. Writing about Fiji
Islands, Tavola (2000, p.18) pointed out that "schools are political
entities, and reflect the communities that they are in". She
presented case studies in which factional politics, sometimes
allied to racial divisions, had negatively affected schools. |
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| Political
forces have also been very evident in Cambodia, where rival
politicians have considered schools to be a key instrument for
extending their influence. A survey of 77 schools in 1997/98
found that 40 per cent had received school buildings from one
or more politicians during the mid-1990s (Bray 1999, p.45);
and in 13 per cent of cases the whole school had been named
or renamed after a politician. In some instances the politicians
were reported to have paid for all construction, but in other
instances communities had provided counterpart resources. From
a community perspective, the system provided a channel to secure
resources which might otherwise have been unavailable. However,
some observers viewed the situation with ambivalence. Pich,
for example (1997, p.45) expressed the view that "schools are
not the appropriate ground for political activities"; and the
influences of political forces could be divisive as well as
enabling. |
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| Faced with
such circumstances in Uganda, the government has chosen to work
with external donors to create a highly centralized mechanism
for allocating resources. Criteria have been made very transparent,
and targeting of resources to the poorest communities has been
supported by random checking. Seel (1999, p.7) reported that
while such a system might sound non-participatory, district
officials greatly welcomed it because the mechanism enabled
them to resist undue pressures from local interests. She added
(p.7) that: |
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| Many grant
recipient communities seemed genuinely surprised and delighted
to receive a grant after years of neglect and were adamant that
the ranking system should be continued, feeding in suggestions
(for example: not giving quite such a strong weighting to schools
with no classrooms as compared with those with a number of ramshackle
classrooms put up by parents, since it was felt that both communities
could be equally poor). |
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| Another
positive feature was that at least some politicians came to
like the system. They used the ranking system to build their
own political capital, in the process gaining a reputation for
fairness. |
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| Patterns
in Namibia exemplify another type of situation. As noted above,
one of the main challenges in post-colonial Namibia has been
to achieve racial integration. Prior to Independence in 1990,
Namibia had been controlled by neighboring apartheid South Africa.
To some extent, the policy of the Namibian government to promote
community participation in education undermined the policy of
promoting equity. In some urban areas, concentrations of white
parents were able to dominate school boards and then set fees
which were high enough to exclude most non-white learners. Also,
the power of some urban school boards, due to the sophistication
and relative wealth of their members, created problems for regional
offices. One school board hired an airplane to take members
to the regional office in order to provide input on teacher
hiring and textbook delivery decisions (Wolf et al. 1999, p.46).
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| Turning
again to more positive experiences, harmony is most likely to
exist where both (or all) partners clearly perceive benefits
that can be derived from the partnership. This does not necessarily
require the partners to have equal powers and inputs: in many
circumstances subordinate partners may be content to be subordinate,
and dominant partners may be content to be dominant. Such a
situation broadly exists in Hong Kong, for example, where over
80 per cent of primary schools are operated by churches, voluntary
associations and other community bodies but with financial inputs
from the government which exceed 95 per cent of the total, and
with corresponding control by the government over syllabuses,
staffing ratios, class size, and many other dimensions (Adamson
& Li 1999). The school sponsoring bodies like this system because
it is stable and is mainly funded by the government; and the
government likes the system because it provides links with communities
while permitting overall control. The various sides operate
with mutual trust, and the system has been working well for
several decades (Sweeting 1995). Similar arrangements may be
found in Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Chad and Togo. The Senegalese government
has a contract with Catholic schools under which the government
pays at least 80 per cent of teachers' salaries; and in Côte
d'Ivoire the government covers 60 to 70 per cent of teachers'
salaries in such schools (Kitaev 1999, p.84). |
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Box
10: The State and Decentralization
In 1999, UNICEF's annual publication The State of the
World's Children focused on education. One theme of
the report concerned partnerships and the changing role
of the state. The publication observed (p.66) that:
The formation of partnerships has become a central concept
in planning and managing education, especially in situations
were significant numbers of children are deprived of
education. The State retains responsibility for setting
national objectives, mobilizing resources and maintaining
educational standards, while NGOs, community groups,
religious bodies and commercial enterprises can all
contribute, making education a more vital part of the
life of the whole community.
The
publication added (p.68) that:
Partnership
in the service of Education for All involves all segments
of society in guaranteeing child rights. For it to work,
however, the State must be prepared to relinquish some
of its decision-making powers to lower levels of the
system.
As
might be expected, the state in some countries is more
willing to relinquish control than in others. And when
control is relinquished, it does not have uniformly
positive effects. Nevertheless, the overall sentiment
about the need for a changing role of the state is widely
shared.
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