The SIF and community participation
Design limitations on extent of participatory activities
The SIF project grew out of a previously World Bank financed programme in Ghana, the Primary School Development Project (PSDP),which had found that an emphasis on providing school infrastructure and materials did not have the intended impact of improving schooling. The World Bank's mid-term review of the PSDP noted that: "It is obvious that much more effort needs to be made to raise awareness among the communities of the need for them to be involved in education."7 It recommended a two-pronged approach, combining information, education and communication (IEC) activities to raise awareness of the value of education, as well as providing a mechanism for responding to the specific needs of the particular school communities and encouraging initiatives to improve the quality of teaching and learning. At the same time, it was reported that: "There has been no apparent improvement in the performance of teachers in the project schools. Many teachers report to school late, and some only go to school two or three times a week. School attendance records are not properly kept. Very little teaching is going on in many classrooms, and instructional time is not used effectively."
7 World Bank, 199?., Mid-term Review of the PSDP, p.4
It was decided that the SIF project should be piloted in phases, to allow time to learn from both projects experience. At the time of writing, the SIF has only just completed a first phase, so it is still in an experimental phase. However, it is useful even at this stage to attempt to draw out lessons learnt as the project moves into an expanded second phase.
These lessons could also be useful in a broader sense, as similar schooling improvement fund-type projects are initiated in other countries.
The main objectives of the SIF were two-fold: to increase community participation and ownership of schools, and to improve the quality of schooling. The two objectives were understood to be essentially linked. Thus: "The SIF is a mechanism for financing small-scale incentives to encourage community-based demand-driven initiatives which demonstrate a potential for improving the quality of teaching and learning, and to foster a sense of community ownership of schools and thereby enhance community interest and active participation in the education process"8. There was some confusion over whether community participation was really considered as an end in itself or as a means, or both. The SIF manual (a sort of working document for the project implementers) does, as has been said above, describe it as an objective.
8 World Bank, 1997, Ghana SIF Mid-term evaluation Terms of Reference.
In the early stages of project identification, a Ghanaian NGO, CEDEP (Centre for the Development of People), was approached to provide the facilitating role in the SIF pilot because of its good track record on engaging communities in participatory development activities. Discussions with members of the NGO about the relative lack of 'teacher development inputs' suggest that they regarded the community ownership of schools element as a means of achieving improvements in the quality of teaching and learning. The NGO, however, found itself obliged to get involved in implementing the SIF to a greater extent than had been expected for a number of reasons which are discussed below. It was therefore under intense pressure to try to keep to the original timetable for the pilot project, and it admitted that, regrettably, time devoted to facilitating community participation activities got squeezed.
CEDEP also believed (and this was reflected in the project design) that to a large extent their main goal was to address the community participation and ownership objective, and (this point emerged during several discussions, including the mid-term review) that the improved quality would emerge from the community empowerment. Paradoxically then, during the SIF pilot there were three sets of problems and shortcomings with this emphasis on community participation. These were:
i.) design limitations in the extent of participatory activities undertaken;ii.) unforeseen practical and institutional barriers to achieving the degree of community empowerment aimed for through the participatory activities actually undertaken; and
iii.) over-optimism concerning the potential of community involvement to achieve the project's objective of improving the quality of teaching and learning.
Taken together, we might wonder even if CEDEP had had both adequate time and appropriate planning of the participatory activities they engaged in during the preparatory stage of the SIF, it would be doubtful if this alone could have achieved both of the project's objectives.
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BOX 1. SIF Process Mobilisation (months 1 to 2) · review and approval of Operational Manual; |
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Project design and appraisal (months 2 to 3) · identification and prioritisation of educational needs; |
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Launching of SIPs (Schooling Improvement Plans) (month 4) · organisation of Launch Workshop; |
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Implementation and review (months 5 to 10) · purchasing of materials; Source: SIF Operational Manual |
It is questionable if the pilot project design encouraged the facilitating NGO to engage the communities in the most appropriate kind of participatory activities. The communities were obliged to contribute 20 per cent of the total costs of their schooling improvement fund plan, either in labour (for instance, in digging the pit latrines or levelling the playing field area) or in money. They could decide on the total budget for their plan, up to a ceiling of 12 to 13 million cedis (the equivalent of about £4,000 or $6,500). Examples of how communities contributed, and the extent to which their participation gave them a sense of ownership in their schools are discussed below in the following section.
Colletta and Perkins9 describe a more intense degree of participation as one where decisions and actions are initiated by the beneficiary group themselves, including determining the school curriculum content, the school calendar and teacher recruitment. They say that when this has happened, the results can be that morale is boosted, drop out and repeater rates reduced, achievement scores improved, and enrolment demand expanded. Yet the authors do not enter into details concerning the scope and the influence of these success stories, and it remains unclear whether these only occur in small-scale projects (for instance, in the NGO, Action Aid's, "shepherd" schools in northern Ghana) or have become more broadly institutionalised in certain countries.
9 Op. Cit. p.6.
The SIF project did not set out to engage in these sorts of activities with communities. Possibly it was for this reason that the link in the SIF between community participation and improving the quality of teaching and learning remained a weak one. However, it shall also be argued below that there is a limit to how far community participation alone can help bring about the desired increase in quality of teaching and learning.
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BOX 2. Guidelines for activities eligible for SIF funding a. production of instructional aids (with encouragement to produce locally relevant teaching aids at school/community level); b. equipment (such as weighing scales, graduated measuring jars, math sets, agricultural equipment, thermometers and weather stations); c. minor repairs to existing school infrastructure (e.g. door locks and hinges); d. specialised furniture (such as storage cupboards); e. improvements to the physical environment (erosion control measures and other environmental activities); f. simple, relatively inexpensive water and sanitation facilities; g. physical education kits (e.g. Footballs, netball equipment, jerseys and nets); h. training and technical assistance (e.g. in special skills for teachers, such as effective reading techniques and technical assistance to implement difficult SIP activities); i. other (e.g. Bicycles for teachers, library books, support to learning-oriented school association programmes such as excursions which promote the objectives of a diversified curriculum) Source: SIF Operational Manual |
The project also had some difficulties in maximising its input and support during the stage of facilitation in the formulation of the SIF plans (SIPs). Four factors were identified as explaining shortcomings in the actual formulation of the SIPs, most of which relate to the tight timing of the pilot design. These were: i.) the pilot's tight deadlines inadvertently encouraged participants to devote undue attention to outputs (for instance, the plans themselves) at the expense of the community empowerment process; ii.) the SIF Operational Manual was not available in the communities or the School Management Committees (SMCs); iii.) the initial inexperience of the CEDEP field supervisors led to a rather mechanical application of the manual's guidelines; and iv.) training for the SMCs eventually took place after the preparation of the SIPs, due to other tight deadlines. One of the members of the SIF mid-term review team commented: "Considering that the process of SIP development is the single most important instrument for achieving community ownership, adequate time should be allowed for this important stage in future", and: "The SIF methodology ought to devote more attention to creating a demand for quality education. This will require lengthening the preparation time in order to allow for a higher standard of animation".10
10 D. Korboe, 1997, notes on the SIF mid-term review.
Again, although it may have been necessary and wise for the SIF to set limits to its scope, it could be argued that the project missed the opportunity to engage in some participatory activities which appear to have had an impact in other countries on improving access to and quality in education. Baku and Agyeman (1997) identify the non-attainment of expected benefits from education as one of the opportunity costs or factors militating against access: "... functional education should keep track of and pace with the economic life and growth of the community. This implies that the content and, indeed the objectives of education are important determinants of access to education as well as retention.... Parents may not have any motivation to send their children to school and the children themselves [not] want to remain in school if education, by its content, gives no hope or prospect of better jobs and better life in the future than for those who fail to attend school."11
11 Baku and Agyeman, op. Cit. p. 12, authors italics.
Some of these design shortcomings have been addressed during the design of the second phase. The early stage of preparation will include a phase of PLA (participatory learning and action), to devote more attention to discussions around the value of education, and what good quality education means, and what are the real problems of schooling. A pilot trial of the PLA has already taken place, as a tack-on to the first pilot phase (by then, these communities were in the last stages of implementing their SIF plans). It aimed to focus on issues of how teacher-community relationships could be improved, how to improve attendance rates, and appropriate levels of supervision on all sides. Some of the CEDEP team feel that this exercise has usefully helped focus attention away from the SIF project inputs and more towards practical ways in which communities and teachers can work in closer collaboration.
