from EVIDENCE to POLICY THWBN Learning what works for better programs and policies August 2015 INDONESIA: How to Get Parents' Attention A growing number of countries are reforming how schools Evaluating different approaches for strengthening account- are managed and are working to involve parents and com- ability and transparency in education is critical to making munities more directly into the school management process. schools successful to improve learning. In Indonesia, the World The idea behind school-based man- Bank worked with the government to set up and evaluate alter- agement reform is that devolving native ways to improve parents' knowledge of and involvement responsibility to schools and to those in the management of money that the government gives to who use the schools will improve ac- schools for operational costs. The evaluation found that direct countability, transparency and ensure approaches, like inviting parents to a meeting or sending text '147O 0575 that resources are allocated properly. messages, led to improvement in parental knowledge and ac- 121P In this way, the quality of education tions, while sendin home brochures and letters didn' lead to will improve and so will learning. any changes. As countries, including Indonesia, continue to However, evidence on the effective- rely on school-based management to improve accountability ness of school-based management and learning, the evaluation shows that getting parents and remains mixed and parental involve- communities involved-and making sure they are informed- ment is often weak. may require more intensive efforts. Indonesia has been implementing school-based management survey, two-thirds of schools made decisions without the par- reforms over the last decade through the School Operational As- ticipation of parents or the school committee, which is made sistance program (Bantuan Operasional Sekolah, often referred up of school officials, parents and community members. In 22 to as BOS). The program provides block grants to primaty and percent of schools, the principals reported making all decisions. junior secondaty schools to pay for operational costs, apart from The weak involvement of parents, including in how the grant salaries for teachers and other civil servants. Schools have more money is used, appeared partly due to lack of knowledge about flexibility and autonomy in managing the money they receive, the program. In a 2009 survey, just over half of parents knew In return, schools are expected to be transparent about how the what BOS stood for and no more than 20 percent knew how money is used and give parents of students and community much money their school received. stakeholders a bigger role in providing input and oversight. The TO increase awareness, the Ministty of Education and Cul- grants made up more than eight percent of the government's ture in 2011 developed an information campaign with the sup- education budget in 2012, covering 228,000 schools with a total port of the World Bank. The campalgn included national, of 43 million students. district and school-level interventions, including television Despite the changes, parental involvement in school man- and press coverage. It sought to inform people about the agement has remalned low. According to a 2010-2011 national grant program, how funds could be used and how parents could get involved. In order to test whether a more intensive ultimately improve learning by boosting parental involvement approach was needed, the government worked with the World in school management, but the short length of the evaluation Bank to pilot and evaluate four additional ways to get informa- meant that the focus was on measuring the impact on parents tion to parents. The goal was to improve use of the grants and knowledge and their school involvement. Evaluationi Randomized control trials were conducted in three districts in each school were randomly selected to either receive text mes- Indonesia: Tulungagung, Malang and Sumbawa. Each district sages or to be part of the control group and receive nothing. All tested one type of approach against a control group. (The ex- parents in the control and treatment groups were interviewed ception was Tulungagung, which tested two variants.) There at endline. In Sumbawa, where the impact of a community were four approaches tested: giving students either brochures meeting was evaluated, there were 41 primary schools avail- or letters to give to their parents; sending parents text mes- able for the pilot. Twenty-one of the schools were randomly sages; and holding a community meeting. The approaches all selected to be invited to join a facilitated school meeting, and sought to give parents information about the program and the 20 were assigned to the control group and didnA get anything. role parents could and should play. For example: What is the In each school, 12 parents were surveyed. At baseline, parents grant program? How much does the program provide for each were asked about their knowledge of the program and how of- student? What can the money be used for? How are parents ten they had visited the school; at endline they were also asked expected to participate in managing the grant? about their specific knowledge about the grant program in In Tulungagung, the 81 primary schools were randomly their school, about the role of the school committee, and about divided into three groups of 27 schools each to test the impact their own participation. of printed material. Students in the first group received a let- ter signed by the principal to give to their parents; students in the second got a colorful brochure for the same purpose, while Examples of text messages sent to parents those in the third group served as the control and didn't re- * What is BOS? B0S is operational assistance to redice the burden of fees ceive any materials. In each school, researchers surveyed 10 par- * Parents should be involved in planning and monitoring ents-for a total of 270 parents per group. In Malang, where * Parents can ask and propose activities in BOS planning * Parents can volintary contribute to school text messaging was evaluated in 26 primary schools, the ran- * For monitoring, parents can talk to the school committee and read the domization was done at the individual parent level. Cell phone notice board s Parents can talk to the school committee and principal if they find misuse numberntsann theecontrolrandstreatmentlgroupsawere0interviewen atnd nine nSmaa hr h mato omnt Two of the approaches-holding a meeting for While both approaches improved parents' understanding of parents to communicate the information and sending the assistance program and how they could get involved in parents text messages-strengthened parents' managing it, meetings had the biggest impact. These meet- knowledge of the school assistance program. ings brought together school staff and school committee This policy note summarizes "Information, Knowledge and Behavior Evaluating Alternative Methods of Delivering School Information to Parents," Pedro Cer- dan-Infantes, Deon Filmer, Policy Research Working Paper, #7233, World Bank, April 2015. http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WVDSContentServer/ WDSP/EAP/20 1 5/04/26/090224b082e0af57/1*0/Rendered/PDF/final0paper0inOOcampaignindonesiapdf members with parents, and gave them a chance to ask ques- Meetings also increased knowledge of the school tions. On average, 80 percent of parents attended a school committees, which are supposed to be a key part of meeting. Their knowledge of five key items related to the the school management process. school assistance program increased by 55 percent. These items included: whether they had ever heard of the program, Although every school is supposed to have a school commit- what the program stood for, how much the school received tee, the national survey had found that close to half of parents (and whether parents knew how much the school was sup- said they didn't know their school had one and another 30 posed to receive) and what the money could and couldn't be percent knew that there was a committee but had never at- used for. Parents who received text messages showed a much tended a committee meeting or received information from smaller gain, around 8 percent, and there was no change in their knowledge of what the grant money could and couldn't be used for. In schools where children brought home letters 7 M or brochures about the school program, there was no change in parents' knowledge. Text messaging and school meetings increased parents' knowledge about how the grants program applied to their school. In particular, holding a meeting proved very effective at boosting people's knowledge of the program as it related to their own school. There was almost a doubling in knowledge as measured by parents' answers to questions about whether they knew about how the money was used, the reporting documents for the program, the planning documents and whether they'd seen the poster that schools have to display the committee. Holding the facilitated meeting raised aware- about the use of funds. Meetings gave parents the chance ness especially about school committees, most likely because to ask questions. It also got parents into the schools. The the school committee members had to come to the meeting. baseline survey found that less than 10 percent of parents Parents who received text messages didn' show the same im- had visited their children's school at least three times in the provement when it came to knowledge of school committees. previous year. As a result, many parents would never have had the chance to see the informational posters that schools Parents who went to meetings or received text had to display. It's also possible that schools didn't bother messages got more involved. putting up the informational posters before the meetings were scheduled. At schools that held a meeting, 39 percent of parents reported Text messages appeared to work differently. Instead of en- visiting their school at least three times a year, twice the rate of couraging a back and forth, the messages conveyed the key that for control schools. Text messages, which led to increased information in a non-interactive way. The text messages also knowledge of the specifics of the grants program for the could be stored, which allows parents to return and review the school in question, also resulted in more school visits. In ad- information. This may be why parents who received text mes- dition, these parents made more in-kind contributions, such sages-l l sent over 22 days-showed more familiarity with as repair work. This may be because text messages explained the planning and reporting documents for the grants program how schools used the funding, possibly encouraging parents than parents who went to a meeting. to assist with tasks that weret covered by the grant program. It turned out that sending home printed material, Despite the increase in parental knowledge, school whether a brochure or letter, didn't have any principals continued to drive planning for grant discernible impact on parental knowledge or spending, suggesting a need for more openness. involvement. Although the meeting and the text message interventions These approaches resulted in no statistically significant change strengthened parents' knowledge of the school grant program, in parental knowledge. About one-fifth of parents who were neither led to more parental participation in deciding how to supposed to get the written material didn't remember seeing it, use the funds-a key objective of the information campaign. possibly because their children failed to pass it along, or because In theory, schools are supposed to consult parents on the the parents themselves may have forgotten about it due to lack grant plan and the school committee is supposed to endorse of interest. Still, this isn't likely to be the main reason for the it; in practice, very few parents reported participating. The lack of impact; a similar ratio of parents didn't attend the in- shortcoming underscored a lack of formal communication formational meeting, but the meeting still had a strong impact. channels between parents and schools, and indicated a need Similarly, only 32 percent of those who received text messages to open up the process to greater public scrutiny, perhaps by remembered getting the messages, yet there was still an impact. convening additional meetings. As more countries institute school-based management re- may be less effective than more-direct approaches, such as forms, policymakers are often finding that informed parents communiry meetings or text messages, in engaging parents. translate into involved parents-and successful learning out- Even while meetings did the most to bolster parent knowledge comes. But not all means of conveying information lead to and school transparency, they failed to engage the parents in the same result. school planning. Getting parents to become more actively in- The findings from Indonesia have potential implications volved may require more formal avenues for interaction, such for the design of information campaigns and the direction of as additional facilitated meetings. With the evaluation cover- future research. The results suggest that information should ing just one year, opportunities exist for further research, both be delivered from school to parents in the most direct way to explore the impact on student performance and other out- possible. While traditional marketing methods, such as televi- comes, and to study whether longer exposure might further sion, were not part of the evaluation, the findings show they boost parent knowledge and participation. The Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund, part of the World Bank Group, supports and disseminates research evaluating the impact of development projects to help alleviate poverty. The goal is to collect and build empirical evidence that can help governments and development organizations design and implement the most appropriate and effective policies for better educational, health and job opportunities for people in developing countries. For more information about who we are and what we do, go to: http://www.worldbank.org/sief The Evidence to Policy note series is produced by SIEF with generous support from the British government's Department for International Development. THE WORLD BANK THE WORLD BANK, STRATEGIC IMPACT EVALUATION FUND 1818 H STREET, NW WASHINGTON, DC 20433 Produced by the Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund Series Editor: Aliza Marcus * Writer: Kathy Chen, Pedro Cerdan-Infantes, Deon Filmer