Parental Human Capital and Effective School Management

Abstract

Education systems in developing countries are often centrally managed in a top-down structure. In environments where schools have different needs and where localized information plays an important role, empowerment of the local community may be attractive, but low levels of human capital at the local level may offset gains from local information. This paper reports the results of a four-year, large-scale experiment that provided a grant and comprehensive school management training to principals, teachers, and community representatives in a set of schools. To separate the effect of the training from the grant, a second set of schools received the grant only with no training. A third set of schools served as a control group and received neither intervention. Each of 273 Gambian primary schools were randomized to one of the three groups. The program was implemented through the government education system. Three to four years into the program, the full intervention led to a 21 percent reduction in student absenteeism and a 23 percent reduction in teacher absenteeism, but produced no impact on student test scores. The effect of the full program on learning outcomes is strongly mediated by baseline local capacity, as measured by adult literacy. This result suggests that, in villages with high literacy, the program may yield gains on students’ learning outcomes. Receiving the grant alone had no impact on either test scores or student participation.

Promoting Parental Involvement in Schools: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments

“…Despite the widespread adoption of SBM, the effectiveness of these programs in raising educational outcomes have been mixed. Experiments in India (Banerjee et al, 2010), the Gambia (Blimpo, Evans, & Lahire, 2011), and Niger (Beasley & Huillery, 2017) show no improvement on student learning outcomes. In contrast, experimental evidence from Indonesia (Pradhan et al, 2014) and Kenya (Duflo, Dupas, & Kremer, 2015) find significant, positive effects on student test scores.…”

The effects of school‐based management on Indian government schools

“…Most empirical studies of SBM effectiveness instead focus on its effects on educational outcomes, including both intermediate indicators, such as attendance, retention, and grade passing rates, and final outcomes in educational attainment, usually measured by increases in test scores (Blimpo, Evans, & Lahire, 2011;Jimenez & Sawada, 1999;Jimenez & Sawada, 2014;Ling et al, 2010). A recent systematic review of the effects of SBM on educational outcomes in lowand middle-income countries concluded that the effects on student attendance and dropout were weak and sometimes inconsistent but that SBM tended to have negative significant effects on grade repetition and positive significant effects on test scores ranging between 0.10 and 0.20 standard deviations (Carr-Hill et al, 2018).…”

“…Giving school committees the authority to procure materials at local level potentially aids efficiency and yields cost savings that can be deployed for other school improvements, while allowing schools to make local decisions enables them to avoid waste by purchasing the inputs they actually require to meet student needs (Gershberg, Meade, & Andersson, 2009). Improvements in the provision of school resources and inputs also stem from the fact that school committees are often able to harness contributions in cash and kind from local communities (Blimpo et al, 2011;Patrinos et al, 2009). Masue and Askvik (2017) noted that one of the key objectives of school committees in Tanzania is to mobilize voluntary community contributions for school projects, Yamada (2014) observed that school committees in Ethiopia mobilized funds for school improvement via collective cultivation of school farms and the collection and sale of wood and grass, and Gershberg et al (2009) documented that parents in community-managed Guatemalan schools were expected to contribute their labor to school construction and maintenance projects.…”

“…A common theme in several policy evaluations of SBM is that reforms are often less effective, or indeed completely ineffective, in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities (Galiani, Gertler, & Schargrodsky, 2008;Gertler, Patrinos, & Rubio-Codina, 2012;Murnane et al, 2006;Skoufias & Shapiro, 2006). Low education levels and low levels of social standing relative to school personnel are key constraints (Blimpo et al, 2011;Carr-Hill et al, 2018); these factors impede the ability of community members to participate effectively in school management decisions and hold school administrators and teachers to account. Poorer parents, and female parents in particular, often experience a lack of confidence that keeps them from actively participating in school council meetings (Okitsu & Edwards Jr, 2017).…”

Strengthening Local Governance of Schools: Evidence From Pakistan

“…evidence on the effectiveness of local committees in improving school management and performance is, at best, mixed. For example, some studies highlight that giving autonomy to school-level actors has a positive impact on process outcomes, such as improved community involvement in schools, but has no impact on student achievement (Beasley & Huillery, 2017;Blimpo, Evans, & Lahire, 2011). Other studies, however, show positive effects of engagement with school committees on test scores (Duflo, Dupas, & Kremer, 2015), while some studies show no effect on intermediate or longer-term outcomes (Banerjee, Banerji, Duflo, Glennerster, & Khemani, 2008).…”