PRESENTATION BY THE GHANA TEAM By Eunice Dapaah Senior Education Specialist World Bank- Ghana Office

BACKGROUND Ghana’s Ministry of Education has introduced and still is introducing a range of strategies and plans aimed at improving the delivery and financing of quality education in the country. One such strategy has been the decentralization of educational decision-making.

Background cont’d It is generally believed that the transfer of responsibilities to the local level will help build the demand for inclusive and effective local governance, empower poor and vulnerable groups, and also improve the delivery of public services

Background cont’d. Over the years, Ghana has made substantial progress towards increasing access to education. The Ministry of Education abolished school fees in basic education and introduced a capitation grant for all schools. This has led to a substantial increase in school enrolment at especially the basic level

Background cont’d The Ministry of Education in Ghana (MOESS) has prioritized the identification of effective methods of ensuring community engagement in education. School Management Committees (SMCs) were formed in 2003, but most education sector studies reveal that most SMCs are not functioning as they ought to.

Background cont’d The Ministry of Education has therefore been pursuing several avenues to increase community participation in the management of education services, including providing information and increasing capacity and organizational ability of the SMCs

Background cont’d Specifically, the approach of MOESS has two main objectives to: Provide SMCs with specific training and guidelines to enable them too overcome capacity and organizational constraints that inhibit them from participating in decision-making at the local level.

Background cont’d Ensure information for accountability by providing SMCs with information on the status of their school’s performance both in absolute and relative terms, and also their rights and responsibilities.

Background cont’d In addition, as community based programs in education are becoming a substantive component of the World Bank’s portfolio, there has been an increased demand for evidence on the effectiveness of these programs, and this has led to a growth in the analysis of the effectiveness of these programs.

What question is the Impact Evaluation Answering The question that this impact evaluation is answering is whether the intervention is able to impact education outcomes.

Cont’d In other words, this impact evaluation is to assess the impact of the intervention on more intermediate outcomes such as SMC involvement in schools’ decision-making process, allocation of schools’ financial resources, and changes in teacher behavior.

Cont’d The main objective of this impact evaluation is to improve the Ghana’s abilities to meet the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) in the context of Education For All Fast Track Initiative (EFA FTI)

Cont’d Specifically, the purpose of this impact evaluation is to: Enable informed decision making regarding strengthening SMCs by gathering qualitative and quantitative information about the current status of SMCs, focusing on the following areas identified through consultation with government and development partners: –Interactions between SMCs and district officers –Current SMC exercise of power over teachers, school improvement plans, and PTAs –Quality of internal group dynamics and cohesion –SMC’s knowledge regarding their rights and responsibilities

Cont’d Measure the average impact of strengthening SMCs through building capacity and providing information on school performance relative to other schools on (i) SMCs engagement in schools and (ii) education quality and attainment. Identify the avenues in which SMCs convert information and capacity building into concrete outcomes Test whether a relatively cheap intervention, such as the provision of information on school status/performance, must be coupled with capacity training in order to attain the desired outcomes of an increase in community engagement and education quality.

CURRENT STATUS OF EVALUATION The Ministry of Education in collaboration with the World Bank put together an IE team made up of representatives from the Ministry of Education, the Ghana Education Service, a head teacher, two SMC chairpersons and a consultant who acts as the project coordinator. Regular meetings of the IE team are organized to discuss issues and promote the intervention

Cont’d There are 53 deprived districts in Ghana 212 public primary schools were selected from these 53 deprived districts Three groups are going to be randomly obtained from these 212 schools, one group will be the comparison or control group and two treatment groups

Cont’d Two forms of intervention are going to be rolled out for the two treatment groups The first treatment group will be given only information on the rights and responsibilities of the SMCs. This represents a less costly intervention The second treatment group will receive a 3-4 day training and capacity building in addition to the information

Baseline Data Collection In line with the baseline data collection the following steps have been taken: inviting technical and financial proposals from research firms evaluating the proposals of two research firms which responded to the invitation writing to the firm which is chosen to carry out the baseline data collection based on the evaluation criteria preparation for baseline data collection in January, 2009

Baseline cont’d Design of three sets of questionnaires for the baseline data collection. These are: - the head teacher questionnaire - the SMC member questionnaire - the SMC Group questionnaire

CHALLENGES TO ROLL-OUT 1. The cost of the intervention may be high, ie, community meetings, hiring trainers, tools etc 2.Getting the support and collaboration of the ministry quite difficult

LESSONS LEARNED

NEXT STEPS Follow-up Data Collection Choosing a firm to oversee the intervention Training of trainers of the School Management Committees Training of SMCs/ Capacity building

Cont’d –Mid-term Review Classroom observations and surprise visits to measure pupil and teacher attendance SMC survey, including a qualitative account of any changes made by SMC’s and schools –Final Data Collection