The Nepalese government announced a reform initiative to transfer responsibility for management of public schools to communities. This reform initiative was dictated by the strong public perception that public schools have failed far short of meeting expectations of the public. When this reform initiative was announced in 2002, based on an amendment to the Education Act in 2001, it met stiff resistance from teachers’ unions and later from the Maoist affiliated student union, and some resistance from the bureaucracy.
- The Community School Support Project (CSSP) was designed to support this reform initiative of the Nepal Government.
- The project—which is a Learning and Innovation credit—is testing whether community management of schools can better contribute to enhanced participation rates, quality and efficiency, and accountability of schools. Community-managed schools (CMSs) are managed by School Management Committees (SMCs) elected and accountable to parents.
- In spite of the continued strong resistance from teachers’ unions, the Parliament has recently, in December 2006, upheld the principle of community management of schools.
- The project assists schools in capacity development through NGOs and provides one-time incentive grants to schools for assuming management responsibility, and performance grants for increase in enrollment and promotion rates.
The project has helped to significantly improve access of children from disadvantaged communities residing within the service area of CMSs to primary education.
Highlights:
- A survey of 30 selected schools covering over 10,000 households recorded the following changes in the service areas of schools between 2004 and 2006:
• Share of out-of-school children of primary age (5 to 9 years) decreased from 41 percent to 15 percent
• Share of out-of-school girls of primary age decreased from 42 percent to 15 percent
• Share of out-of-school dalit (lowest Hindu caste) children of primary age decreased from 50 percent to 18 percent
• Share of out-of-school janajati (indigenous groups) children of primary age decreased from 44 percent to 15 percent
- Other surveys have reported the following qualitative changes in CMSs:
• Increased community ownership and participation expressed in terms of higher frequency of SMC meetings, increased resource generation, and more frequent parent visits to schools
• Transfer of children from private schools to CMSs
• Reduction in teacher absenteeism
• Improved learning environment
- Total project cost is US$5.18 million, of which IDA contributed US$5 million, and the Government of Nepal the balance.
- Managing radical reforms like making schools with government recruited teachers accountable to communities requires deep knowledge of political economy of reforms, capacity of government officials to communicate effectively with stakeholders including politicians and civil society, and capacity of SMCs to manage schools as well as fend off attacks against community management.
- The Bank assisted the government to launch an extensive dialogue on community management of schools, establishing and building capacity of Community School National Network – a network of CMSs. Similarly, the Bank helped to develop the basic principles of community management of schools.
Rigorous evaluation of the achievements of CMSs will provide evidence for increasing the scale of the program to achieve the government target of transferring all schools to community management.
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