| Introduction Until two years ago, many children of the Honduran hamlet of El Guásimo did not go to school. The nearest school was several miles away, forcing the children to walk along a dangerous path to reach it. Now El Guásimo has its own primary school, and community members meet once a month to discuss school-related matters, such as raising funds to build an additional classroom. The school in El Guásimo is one of thousands of schools that have recently opened up throughout Honduras under the World Bank financed Community Education Project, known by its Spanish acronym Proheco. Proheco aims to establish new primary schools in rural communities that prior to the project did not have access to a school. An innovative feature of the project is that parents are given key decision-making powers with regards to managing the schools. A recent impact evaluation of the project sought to determine if, in fact, it contributes to greater access to education and also leads to parental empowerment with regards to the running of the school. The evaluation showed that Proheco has achieved its desired objectives: by 2004, more than 90,000 children had enrolled in Proheco schools. Many of these children either did not have access to a school before or else had to walk more than 3 kilometers to reach the nearest state-run school. The evaluation also showed that parents have become empowered to manage the newly built schools, even though participation in school management decisions is often limited to only a few community members. Project Background Proheco is an education decentralization project that was launched in 1999 with the objective of enhancing access to education in remote areas of rural Honduras. Central to the project is the creation of community-based school councils that are responsible for a series of administrative, budget, and personnel management matters. This type of decentralization reform is known as school-based management; it envisages a shift of decision-making power away from the education authorities to the school itself. The newly empowered decision-maker is the school council, comprised of parents and other community members who are interested in school management issues but who do not have children in school. Proheco’s school councils consist of two separate bodies: the general assembly and the board. Membership to the general assembly is automatically granted to all community members; board membership requires a formal election process. The councils are expected to carry out the following tasks: building and maintaining the school; buying school supplies; overseeing the school’s budget; and selecting, hiring, and, if necessary, firing teachers. Evaluating Empowerment Outcomes Among other things, the impact evaluation of the project sought to gauge to what extent the project contributes to the empowerment of community members in terms of undertaking school management functions. The evaluation applied a framework for measuring empowerment which was developed by the Bank’s empowerment team and which was used to develop hypotheses about the project’s processes and outcomes, to generate indicators of empowerment, and to design instruments for data collection. (Further information on this framework can be found at http://www.worldbank.org/empowerment). School Council Empowerment – Quantitative Data School council empowerment, that is the councils’ capacity to effectively perform management functions, was measured, for example, in terms of: · whether or not the school council has selected the teachers of their own will, without influence from other actors, · whether or not the council monitors teacher attendance, and · whether or not the council or the community contributes to school maintenance either financially or with manual labor. When collected data was analyzed, it showed that, indeed, the councils have become empowered, that is, participated effectively in decision-making. 71.7 per cent of the surveyed councils say that they select teachers independently, that is, without influence from political leaders or government officials. Even more impressively, 93.3 per cent say they monitor teacher attendance, and 91.7 percent say they contribute to school maintenance. This means that many, if not most, school councils are able to carry out tasks with which they had no prior experience. A number of factors were taken into consideration to try and explain these high levels of empowerment, including parents’ education levels, information availability and capacity building. The councils were asked, for instance, whether or not they had received any training, how long the training lasted, and whether or not they made use of the informational manuals, which had been distributed to them. Councils were also asked about the efficiency and effectiveness with which the government supports their creation and operation. These questions addressed the following issues: · the amount of time that it takes for councils to receive legal status (a prerequisite for them to open up bank accounts and consequently receive government funds to pay teachers and buy school materials); · the amount of time that passes between councils receiving legal status and the first government funds (the government regularly transfers funds to the councils so that they can buy teaching and learning supplies); · whether or not the promoter (a government employee who visits communities and provides information and training about school management) actually helps the councils with administrative matters; · the quality of the training that the promoter provides; · whether or not delays in the payment of the promoter negatively affect administrative procedures (like obtaining legal status, opening a bank account etc); · the number of annual financial transfers the council receives from the government; and · the extent of the delays with which funds are transferred. The education level of household heads had the most notable influence on school council empowerment. This suggests that communities with higher average education levels are likely to carry out their tasks somewhat better. Another variable that has certain explanatory weight in terms of school council empowerment are the delays in the payment of the promoter: the higher the delays, the less empowered the school council is. The underlying reason is that the promoters, who provide information and training on school council responsibilities, work less and visit the communities less often if their salary is not paid on time, which in turn means that communities receive less support and training. School Council Empowerment – Qualitative Data While the quantitative data shows that school council empowerment in most communities is high, qualitative data, collected in community and focus group interviews, provides a more differentiated picture of the empowerment processes taking place. In theory, all community members are part of the (general assembly of the) school council and, as such, are expected to be informed about and regularly participate in council meetings and decisions. This seems to be the case, for example, when communities, upon being identified to participate in the Proheco project, convene their first general assembly to elect the board of the council. However, once the council is more established and school-related decision-making becomes more routine, community participation seems to drop. At the same time, members of the board become the main decision-makers. Even among the board members, however, decision-making is sometimes limited to a selected few. One of the trends that is also noteworthy is that women tend to be underrepresented in the boards. Community members cite the following reasons for limited participation and, hence, level of empowerment: internal divisions within the community, lack of initiative, low levels of education, and limited options to challenge the usual decision-makers in a community. This means while empowerment is high in the sense that the councils carry out their assigned responsibilities, it is only a limited number of community members who participate in school-related decision-making. Conclusion An example such as Proheco demonstrates how empowerment is measured in the context of an education decentralization program, focusing specifically on the ability of community members to carry out school management functions. This ability is influenced both by their education levels as well by the efficiency with which the government supports the smooth operation of the project, for instance, by paying the salaries of promoters on time. Findings from the impact evaluation also indicate that empowerment does take place but is not evenly spread throughout the community. These findings are important as they highlight the fact that a person’s or group’s empowerment is shaped by the social norms, traditions and hierarchies that exist in any given community. *The content of this article is based on the impact evaluation carried out by ESA Consultores, Honduras as well as on the personal observations of the author, Nina Heinsohn. |
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