Publication: Decentralized Decision-making in Schools : The Theory and Evidence on School-based Management
Date
2009
ISSN
Published
2009
Author(s)
Abstract
The school-based management (SBM) has
become a very popular movement over the last decade. The
World Bank's work on school-based management emerged
from a need to better define the concept, review the
evidence, support impact assessments in various countries,
and provide feedback to project teams. The authors took
detailed stock of the existing literature on school-based
management and then identified several cases that the Bank
was supporting in various countries. The authors present as
well general guidance on how to evaluate school-based
management programs. The Bank continues to support and
oversee a number of impact evaluations of school-based
management programs in an array of countries. Despite the
clear commitment of governments and international agencies
to the education sector, efficient, and equitable access
remains elusive for many populations - especially for girls,
indigenous peoples, and other poor and marginalized groups.
Many international initiatives focus on these access issues
with great commitment, but even where the vast majority of
children do have access to education facilities, the quality
of that education often is very poor. This fact increasingly
is apparent in the scores from international learning
assessments on which most students from developing countries
do not excel. Evidence has shown that merely increasing
resource allocation without also introducing institutional
reforms in the education sector will not increase equity or
improve the quality of education. One way to decentralize
decision-making power in education is known popularly as
SBM. There are other names for this concept, but they all
refer to the decentralization of authority from the central
government to the school level. SBM emphasizes the
individual school (represented by any combination of
principals, teachers, parents, students, and other members
of the school community) as the main decision-making
authority, and holds that this shift in the formulating of
decisions will lead to improvement in the delivery of education.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Barrera-Osorio, Felipe; Fasih, Tazeen; Patrinos, Harry Anthony; Santibáñez, Lucrecia. 2009. Decentralized Decision-making in
Schools : The Theory and Evidence on School-based Management. Directions in Development ; human development. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2632 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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