Empowerment of school committees and parents in Tanzania: delineating existence of opportunity, its use and impact on school decisions
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Date
2014-12-05
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University of Bergen
Abstract
Since the end of the twentieth century, public administration systems in developing countries
have undergone significant transformation. This comes as a result of the global shift from
centralized to decentralized political, fiscal and administrative systems. Through such
transformation, governments seek to empower people at the grassroots level and to improve
service delivery in all sectors. This dissertation examines the empowerment of school committees and parents in school
governance, focusing on the sub-sector of primary education in Tanzania. In particular, it
accomplishes three key goals: First, it delineates the empowerment of school committees and
parents using Alsop and lleinsohn’s (2005) and Alsop et al.s' (2006) three-level framework for
measuring empowerment. The three levels are the Degree of Existence of Opportunity (DEO)
for people at the grassroots level to participate in decision making, the Degree of Use of the
Opportunity (DUO) and the Degree Of Impact (DOI) that the use of opportunity has on the
decisions made by a school. Second, the dissertation determines factors affecting the
empowerment of school committees in Tanzania. As for the third goal, the dissertation suggests
important policy issues to be addressed for increasing the empowerment of people at the
grassroots level in school governance The study from which this work is written was carried out in 2012 and 2013 in seven
purposefully selected districts/municipalities in Tanzania. The study employed a mixed methods
approach. 214 members of school committees and 96 non-members from 101 schools answered
a survey questionnaire. Additionally, 17 in-depth interviews with education officials, teachers
and parents were conducted. As a follow-up to the emerging issues from the survey, the study
also involved two focus-group discussions (one each) with parents and members of school
committees. The survey data were analyzed quantitatively through the comparison of means,
independent sample t-tests, correlation analysis and multiple-linear regression analysis, all of
which are presented in the dissertation mainly through tabulation. The data from interviews and
focus groups were analysed through content analysis and are presented here in narrative form.
The results show interesting trends for the three levels of empowerment, that is, DEO, DUO and
DOI. Measured on an index scale of 10 (the lowest) 60 (the highest), DEO had the highest
mean index (42), followed by DUO (39) and DOI as the lowest (37). These trends suggest that
people at the grassroots level often are unable to use existing decision-making opportunities.
There are various reasons for this. Even when they are able to use the opportunity to participate,
their priorities may not be taken into consideration when the final decisions are made. This
explains the phenomenon of the perceived degree of empowerment declining along the
continuum from DEO to DOI. The findings also indicate that gender, access to information and being a member of a school
committee are significant for determining the degree of empowerment in decision making, not
only for the members of school committees but for parents more generally. Respondents who
reported a high degree of access to information also indicated a high degree of empowerment.
This finding suggests that in order to play an active role in local education-development
initiatives, parents and school committee members, in addition to being aware of their own local
community interests, need to be well informed about issues of national interest for instance
policy intentions, education priorities and curriculum content and direction. Regarding gender,
the study reveals that men dominate the decision making process in school governance, and that
this is due to constraints posed by the opportunity structure, especially the patriarchal culture of
formal and informal institutions in society. The study therefore suggests the need for multisector efforts, not only to create awareness of educational issues amongst men and women at the
grassroots level, but to address gender inequality in decision making, particularly regarding the
control of schools and how children's schooling should proceed The findings of this study also indicate that being a member of a school committee is an
important factor for individual empowerment. This confines the proposition that people at the
grassroots level become more powerful and capable of exerting influence in decision making if
they are well organized in groups. In accordance with the ‘local organization capacity thesis',
this study suggests that the empowerment of individuals at the local level can
achieved through self-organized neighborhood groups, and that such groups can
significant role in school governance. In light of the findings, the study concludes, first, that while the empowerment of parents and
school committees in Tanzania has convincingly been achieved, especially with regard to local
people taking adequate responsibility in the construction and maintenance of school buildings,
resource contribution and other fundamental aspects, there is insufficient progress in increasing
their influence on critical issues such as the national education policy, the curriculum and
pedagogy. Secondly, little attention has been paid to the important enablers of local
empowerment. The study provides evidence of the insufficient training of school committee
members at the local level. There is also inadequate information on the government's education
policy and the curriculum. Financial matters pose another barrier for local empowerment. There
is a lack of transparency about bank transactions on behalf of schools, and the schools are
plagued by inadequate funding. This is due to the low income base of the population, insufficient
allocation and delays in the disbursement of grants from the central government
Based on the findings and the identified challenges, it is hereby suggested that the current
empowerment efforts - that is, the efforts to empower people at the grassroots level to be
involved in school-related decision-making processes - need to advance from the establishment
of institutional frameworks for people's engagement to building those people's capabilities. In
order for this to happen, the people need to receive adequate resources and training as well as
increase their level of public awareness. Such goals could be obtained through a multifactor/network approach involving the state, the private sector, non-governmental organizations
and the local communities. This approach, in my view, can work better in addressing the
currently identified resource and training gaps, and it could also improve accountability
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Thesis
Keywords
Public administration systems, School governance, Developing countries, Tanzania, School committees