Management shortcomings

School-based management (SBM) is a broad term that covers different degrees of autonomy for schools in terms of decision-making and areas where the schools have decision making power. It includes not only staff management in terms of hiring and firing the personnel, but also includes budget and financial resources management, as well pedagogical-related issues. Some countries have developed different ‘SBM-models’, for schools to manage their resources according to their political, social, and economic context.

School management has two main dimensions: political and educational dimensions. It impacts not only the balance of powers between the central and local level, but also the learning outcomes of the pupils.

School-based management can be considered as a decentralized way of running schools. Efficient decentralization of school management comes together with flexibility and adaptability to the local needs. There are different types of balances to consider:

• Between local autonomy and central regulation: on the one hand, local actors are more aware of the needs of schools and communities, but on the other hand, central administration has an overall big picture of the national educational system and can coordinate it as a whole entity.
• Between technical expertise and political arguments: local actors may have a field expertise which political actors may not have. There can be conflicts of interest about the resources’ management between these two types of actors.
• Between professionalism and accountability: it is important, but sometimes difficult, to fix a line of trust between local actors, who are accountable for the management of schools at their level, and central actors who are accountable for the good general functioning of the educational system.
• Between mandate and resources: resources may sometimes not be sufficient to reach the objectives set by higher level of the educational administration.

In some cases, decentralization may not be implemented in the right way for several reasons: the weakness of the state, the fact that it is sometimes relatively new states resulting from the decolonisation, the scarcity of resources (financial, material and human), and the unequal distribution of power at the local level. Therefore transparency, accountability, and resource management are three prominent criteria to ensure the right and efficient decentralization of school management. In effect, it should not be considered as an abandonment of the state, but rather as another maybe more effective management strategy.

When it comes to management inside the school, School-Based Management (SBM) is often highlighted as the most efficient way to run schools in developed countries as much as in developing ones. Its objective is to decentralize the decision-making process to the school level and to diversify the stakeholders who are involved. Teachers, parents, and the community are the three main groups of stakeholders to consider in the implementation of SBM.

School-based management includes several types of strategies generally agreed-upon among the international community and the available grey literature. However, there also are some concerns about the way governments implement it, depending on the context and conditions under which it is decided, and that can worsen the education quality in a country.

Promising policy options

Resources management

Better use of the resources can, under the right conditions, enable a closer monitoring of the school personnel and a better match between local and national needs and priorities. Consequently, changes in resources management may not only have an impact on the number of resources available but also on education quality in itself.

In the realm of financial measures, it involves better resource management in budget allocation, training, and financial control structures. As for physical resources, it implies more efficient decisions regarding teaching and learning material and other material infrastructures. Finally, it is important to provide professional development measures for teachers, local offices and school personnel. Review of recruitment criteria and procedures and clarification of posts and profiles, so that the capacities exist for this exercise.

Transparency and accountability frameworks

School-Based Management (SBM) is not only a financial partnership between schools and the government but can also be a less bureaucratic, more democratic and relevant system. I involves:

• consultation mechanism;
• information sharing;
• a clear monitoring and evaluation platform;
• strong audit structures;
• that strong and clear legislation is prominent in this respect;
• an EMIS system to ensure effective monitoring and planning processes; and
• ICT integration for strategic planning.

Community involvement

Community members should understand why it is necessary for them to take part in school management at the local level. This means there is a need for public awareness, for parents’ associations and school committees to be trained, and that, that despite social inequalities, all the parents have an equal status in the decision-making process.

Develop community structures that gather all the different actors in a school committee (teachers, personnel, students, parents’ associations), which will allow parents and the community to be more involved in the monitoring and evaluation process.

For more on this subject, consult Policy page Relationship between schools and their community.

Teacher empowerment

Teachers have a central role to play not only in the management of the classroom but also within the school. They should feel empowered with such a system since they are major actors in the educational process and are at the direct contact of the pupils. Them being more listened to and involved in the decision-making process of the school means they can put pressure on the political agenda.

Local decision-makers must adapt to the different types of teachers’ contracts, be it community teachers, civil servants, contract teachers, and volunteers. This also means that there should be teacher professional development strategies (on-going training and not only teaching certificate) in place.

Other policy options

Some authors raise concerns about the way School-Based Management is implemented in some developing countries. Here are some issues to stress as consequences of bad practices:

• Increase of demand-side pressure like in the private school system. Since schools are more autonomous in their management, competition can appear between the schools of the same region and tend to create some selectivity and inequalities of access in the educational offer of public schools.
• Resentment for monitoring by parents. School staff can be unwilling to involve parents and the community within the school management since it decreases their amount of power and makes the decision-making process more complex.
• More impact of the context. In times of crisis, wars or conflicts, direct impacts on education can be more important in a decentralized management system since the state has less power of regulation and control over the troubles which can occur within the communities.
• Conflicts of interests between different local groups. It can be harder at the decentralized level for all the different community groups to have equal status and agree on educational decisions. It is often the wealthier ad more literate groups that are more engaged in the SBM.
• Increase in the administrative and management workload for the school personnel (mostly the headteachers).
• Negative impact on gender. In general, there are a majority of female teachers but a majority of male leaders of the school. Increasing the role of school leaders could highlight male domination over female teachers within the school administration.
• Decrease in teacher’s salary and job security, since it is directly due to the resources’ management within the school.

Policy options for improving Equity and Inclusion

Gender-responsive policies

Promising policy options

Resource management and gender-responsive budgeting

All of the policies and strategies recommended in the general section of the present Policy page apply for this category.

When budgeting responsibilities are devolved to decentralized authorities, they must ensure to implement gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) (GPE and UNGEI, 2017: 105). In general, GRB enhances the comprehension of the impact of the education sector budget on all student’s learning process. Thus, informed decentralized resource allocation could increase the effectiveness of the policies implemented (GPE and UNGEI, 2017). For instance, the local needs might call for gender-targeted expenditures, such as scholarships (GPE and UNGEI, 2017).

In general, decentralized decision-makers should analyze if the human and financial resources are effectively contributing to the development of an inclusive, gender-responsive quality education system.

Capacity-Building and community involvement

Capacity-building opportunities for decentralized authorities is essential to ensure that they mainstream gender throughout their decision-making process. A recommended strategy could be to introduce ‘gender specialists and gender focal points at the provincial and district level [who] can significantly strengthen local gender mainstreaming capacity’ (ADB, 2012).

Decentralization must provide the opportunity to those who are the most excluded in the community to take part in the decision-making process (Bandyopadhyay and Subrahmanian, 2008). In some contexts, setting quotas or targets to guarantee the representation of certain populations, such as women, in decentralized decision-making structures may be necessary (ADB, 2012). Capacity development opportunities should also be offered, especially for women, to ensure active and effective participation in the decision-making structures (ADB, 2012).

Decentralized authorities, such as the members of School-based management committees SBMC, could become powerful leverages against gender issues affecting their community when appropriate training is provided. For instance, they could become awareness-raisers and advocators for the prohibition of early-marriage as well as for the right of all students to a quality, inclusive, gender-responsive education (Oduwaiye and Bakwai, 2017).

Capacity-building opportunities could lead to another type of actions, such as the review of existing curricula and teaching material by decentralized actors to ensure that it is gender-responsive (e.g. in North-Western Nigeria, SBMCs collaborated with the government and other stakeholders in reviewing the curricula and teaching material for gender sensitivity (Oduwaiye and Bakwai, 2017).).

Policies for children with disabilities

Promising policy options

Coordination between different actors in order to build inclusive education systems

Coordination between different stakeholders involved in a decentralized system is important. At the central level, it is important to guarantee the values of equity and inclusion. In general, the Ministry of Education must guarantee the right of education for all, specifically, it must ‘safeguard and ensure that universal rights of access and participation in inclusive education are applied equally to SEN [special education needs] learners’ (Peters, 2003: 66).

Thus, the MoE should ensure that educational national policy is based on the values of equity and inclusion, and enhance a ‘shared ownership’ of such values throughout all levels of the education system (Ainscow et al., 2016, cited by European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education, 2017). This point is essential since the transition towards inclusion and equity does not rely solely on ‘technical or organizational changes, it requires a change of culture throughout the education system’ (Dyson et al., 2004, cited by UNESCO, 2017a: 24).

Ensure that all stakeholders involved in the process understand their own responsibilities. Develop an effective communication strategy and involve stakeholders so that they comprehend their new roles and responsibilities in building and guaranteeing an inclusive education system (European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education, 2017). An inclusive education system relies on the coordination and collaboration of intersectoral stakeholders. It is essential to ensure a clear understanding of the structures responsible for managing equity and inclusion strategies at central and decentralized levels.

Provide the necessary support and capacity-building opportunities. Along with passing responsibility to the local level, the MoE should guarantee the necessary support and capacity-building opportunities so that all stakeholders are able to perform their new responsibilities (European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education, 2017; Peters, 2003; UNICEF Regional Office for CEE/CIS, 2013).

Ensure representative decision-making structures. Decentralization allows more stakeholders to actively participate in the decision-making process (communities, families, students, teachers, school leaders, Disability People’s Organizations (DPOs), NGOs, development organizations and agencies, among many others). It is necessary to ensure that the decentralized decision-making structures representative of the community overall. Thus, it is very important to include marginalized populations, especially individuals with disabilities (UNESCO Bangkok, 2010).

At the local level, local authorities acquire new responsibilities through decentralization, which allows them to ‘take into account the needs of particular groups or even individual learners’ (IBE-UNESCO, 2008a: 21). In many countries, decentralization processes have had a positive impact on inclusive education programming (e.g. this is the case in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Kosovo (Losert, 2010).) Nevertheless, as expressed before, it is necessary to ensure sufficient support and capacity-building, as well as a clear comprehension of responsibilities for all stakeholders.  

When decentralization is done at the school level, also known as school-based management, the decision-making power is devolved to the individual schools (e.g. this has been done in countries such as Serbia, Georgia, Macedonia, and Albania). ‘This allows schools to manage their own resources in order to meet the diverse needs of learners in their communities, to take risks in developing inclusive education programmes and to be proactive in coordinating other services and mobilizing community resources in the interests of their students’ (IBE-UNESCO, 2008a: 21). Nevertheless, in this system, it is very important to provide an effective legal and policy structure that enhances inclusive education initiatives, which could scale-up to a national level (Peters, 2003). Additionally, it is of utmost importance to ensure that School management committees are diverse and inclusive (UNESCO-Global Education Monitoring Report, 2017).

Resource management for inclusive education

The World Report on Disability states that ‘inclusion has the best chance of success when school funding is decentralized, budgets are delegated to the local level, and funds are based on total enrolment and other indicators’ (2011: 220). Decentralized funding allows services, to a certain degree, to adapt to local needs and support innovative inclusive practices (Losert, 2010). Yet, central authorities must ensure that ‘decentralization has an inbuilt commitment to equity through financing formulas that link resources to levels of poverty and deprivation in education’ (UNESCO, 2009a: 40).

Coherent and coordinated resource management systems, as well as financial controls, are essential to ensure that resources are allocated to the intended purposes in a decentralized education system –such as including children with disabilities in mainstream settings (UNESCO, 2009d; UNICEF Regional Office for CEE/CIS, 2013). Additionally, central authorities should support local authorities and schools in identifying other sources of funding for inclusive education: ‘this could be through school improvement grants, individual scholarships to students with disabilities, public-private partnerships, donations from local businesses and individuals, in-kind offers from community members, school vouchers, or fund-raising activities’ (Losert, 2010: 31).

Transparency and accountability

In general, in order to have a transparent and accountable decentralized inclusive education system, regular monitoring and evaluation, as well as coordination among the different actors should be ensured (UNICEF Regional Office for CEE/CIS, 2013; Peters, 2003). ‘The absence of monitoring systems to track schools and school performance hinders the identification, targeting and improvement of the weakest elements’ (UNICEF Regional Office for CEE/CIS, 2013: 131). Thus, it is necessary to guarantee that throughout the decentralization process, the right to quality education and learning is positively being ensured for all at the local level, especially for those who are most marginalized –such as children with disabilities.

All of the different strategies mentioned in the general section of the present Policy page apply as well.

Community involvement

Inclusive education is intersectoral by nature and thus relies on strategic partnerships done with the communities and families. Their participation should be encouraged and enabled through capacity-building opportunities as well as adequate decentralized decision-making structures. It is very important to clarify –through an adequate policy framework– the responsibilities of each stakeholder to impede the duplication of efforts.

The involvement of communities and families is a key pillar in the development of positive attitudes towards inclusive education and the promotion of the strategic framework for the inclusion of children with disabilities in mainstream settings (IIEP-UNESCO, 2019). Overall, partnerships among families, communities, and schools can lead to effective participation and enhanced learning results of children with disabilities in mainstream schools (IIEP-UNESCO, 2019).

All of the different strategies mentioned in the general section of the present Policy page apply as well.

Policies for displaced populations and host communities

Contents under review

Policies for minority populations

Contents under review