Community participation is deeply interwoven in the implementation of the The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. Every school has to have a School Management Committee (SMC) which consists of members from the local community and in theory; this SMC approves plans, signs cheques and monitors the school performance[1].  The SMC (and the local community as a whole) form an important part of the accountability chain as they supplement inspections by higher rung officials, with their regular monitoring. However, anecdotal evidence, based on my field visits, suggests that most teachers do not come to school regularly as parents and community members are not concerned about the school’s functioning. The only time the community approaches the school is to ask for entitlements or to check on Mid-day meals. In some of the cases that I encountered, the SMCs were largely non functional, with the Headmaster (HM) handling most of its affairs[2]. The SMC members stated that they were not aware of their roles and all they did was sign cheques. They wondered why they should concern themselves with anything further when they weren’t getting any monetary or physical incentive. This lack of community participation seemed to be hampering the school’s output by allowing teachers to neglect their duties.

Does data from the District Report Cards survey conducted in 2011 help further this argument? I used two variables (one on the functioning of SMCs and the other on community contributions) to test if more community participation leads to better school performance. In our survey, we had asked the HMs to tell us how often SMCs met. If we correlate the frequency of the SMC meetings with student and teacher attendance, we find that those schools where SMCs met very rarely (once in six months) had lower teacher attendance as compared to those which met more frequently (once in a month or once in two-three months). SMC meetings, however, did not appear to have an impact on student attendance. These results were observed even after controlling for district fixed effects and other variables like frequency of officials visiting the school, infrastructure etc. It appears to be the case that well functioning SMCs can help in monitoring teachers and increasing their attendance.

We had also asked the HMs whether the community contributed to the school and in what form (monetary, supervision, material or labour). We found that, overall, around 26% of schools had received some contribution from the community (in 2010-11). Do these contributions improve school functioning? The hypothesis here is that a community which contributes to the school would be more interested in its outcomes and thus we would see higher teacher and student attendance. However, there seemed to be no relation between these variables. To check if any specific type of contribution had an impact on school performance, these contributions were broken up into the type of contributions, we found that monetary and material contributions were correlated with higher student and teacher attendance, though these results were not robust after controlling for fixed effects and other variables. However, without details on the manner in which these contributions have been utilised, it is hard to ascertain the total extent of local level involvement. It would thus be interesting to see how a community interacts with the school when it makes contributions, are the monetary contributions just token amounts or are they used for actual learning/infrastructure purposes? Is the community actually interested in how their money is used?

There is ample literature on the importance of community participation on service delivery[3]. But, as we can see in the case of education, simply institutionalising community participation does not ensure that they will participate. In a control trial on Village Education Committees (VECs)[4] in Uttar Pradesh conducted in 2005-06, it was found that informing members of the community about their responsibilities and equipping them with ways to actually gauge the learning levels of their children, did not prove to be an incentive for greater participation. Engaging the community does not seem to be as simple as providing information[5]. As we saw from the anecdotal evidence, SMC members could not find any incentive to participate and it seems like information is not a sufficient condition to bring about a behavioural change[6].

Currently, most SMC trainings by states focus on equipping them with the necessary understanding of their roles and responsibilities. While, this is an important first step, it may not be enough to equip them to fully participate in the learning process. Considering the important role that the community has been given, it is essential that states continue to come up with innovative ways to develop the capability and capacity of the people to engage constructively.

[1] An earlier blog provides a summary of the roles and responsibilities of SMCs- http://www.accountabilityindia.in/accountabilityblog/2263-school-management-committees-smcs-guardian-institution-elementary-education-

[2] The annual meetings to discuss the implementation of the right to education at the state level repeatedly discuss this problem in their minutes. These minutes can be found here- http://www.ssa.nic.in/planning/pab-minutes/pab-minutes-2012-13

[3] Empowering local communities to monitor teachers and providing them with funds to hire local contract teachers was found to have a strong impact on learning levels in Kenya. The paper can be found here- http://www.nber.org/papers/w17939. Similarly, Community monitoring of health services in Uganda were found to be correlated with improved with improved health worker performance. This can be found here- http://www.cid.harvard.edu/neudc07/docs/neudc07_s2_p11_bjorkman.pdf.

[4] VECs were precursors to School Management Committees

[5] Interestingly, the researchers found that remedial classes by local volunteers had a positive impact on the learning levels. A community which is engaged and has the capacity to provide supplementary teaching post school hours could have a great impact on learning levels.

[6] Some other methods to improve SMC functioning are explored in earlier blogs, for example http://www.accountabilityindia.in/accountabilityblog/2522-empowering-school-management-committees-helping-smc-members-plan-better and http://www.accountabilityindia.in/accountabilityblog/2532-decentralised-education-delivery-do-gps-holds-lessons-smcs-part-1