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Strengthening School Governance : Experience of CHOLEN Project

The project titled Children's Opportunities for Learning Enhanced (Cholen) is a primary education project having three main objectives. These are: (1) improving access to basic education of under served communities in rural, remote and relatively inaccessible areas with special emphasis on girls; (2) improving quality and relevance of basic education; and (3) enhancing capacity of the mainstream basic education system and its accountability to the communities. The project is being implemented in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) districts namely, Bandarban, Rangamati and Khagrachari. The project works with government, non-government and community managed primary schools for facilitating participatory processes whereby indigenous communities can take ownership and management of the education process, and meet the educational needs of their children. The incidence of corruption in Bangladesh is widespread, unacceptably high and it exists at all levels. Primary education, which is overwhelmingly dominated by the public sector, is also not free from corruption. Some analysts argue that like many other public sector departments, it is mainly corruption that has made the public-sector primary education almost dysfunctional. Here corruption is used in a broader sense, which can take various forms ¾ from taking bribe form teachers for a preferred place of posting to unauthorized leave of absence of teachers. It is needless to say that widespread corruption is negatively impacting upon the overall performance of the education sector and the quality of primary education in particular. Following are some examples of observed corruption at local level primary education in CHT:

• Teachers are irregular in attending schools. Often they arrive late and depart early. Unauthorized leave of absence of teachers is a common phenomenon. Many of them do not stay at their posting places.
• Some teachers contract out teaching job. They illegally recruit local people to teach at schools in their absence in return for payment of a small part of their salaries.
• Teachers tend to pay bribes to be and remain posted at their preferred places.
• Monitoring from the officials of education department (e.g. Upazila Education Officer) is extremely weak. They are stationed considerably away from the school; often avoid field visit to relatively inaccessible schools and tend to take bribes from teachers.
• Incorrect reporting with regard to school enrollment, attendance from school to the Education Office/Department is common. For example, enrollment and attendance figures are often inflated. Systems that are in place to cross check these figures are not effective.
• Students are supposed to get textbooks free of charge from their respective schools. These are available in the open market for sale indicating that some teachers/education offices are involved in making these available in the open market in return for illegal payments.
• Some parents get their children admitted to more than one school. This is to get stipend given by the government. The stipend amount is allegedly shared between the parents and the collaborating teacher.

CHOLEN took a number of steps for addressing corruption at the local level of primary education. The current focus of CHOLEN's initiative to address corruption is on building local capacity centering on schools to combat corruption. Some of the specific steps taken to build local capacity to address corruption are the following:

• CHOLEN and its partner organizations are engaged in raising awareness of the local communities they work with on their children's right to primary education as well as their obligation and responsibility to send children to school. Local communities in general and the parents in particular are provided with relevant information regarding the obligations of government teachers and education officers. These include timely attendance to and departure from schools, teachers' responsibility of providing good quality education and improving teaching-learning environment and support from Education Department in resolving problems related to schools and children's education.
• CHOLEN plays an important role in activating and strengthening local school management committees (SMCs). The members of SMCs are made aware of their legitimate roles, responsibilities and authorities, particularly the authority with regard to recommending approval of teachers' salary and monitoring teachers' attendance. The project builds capacity of SMCs so that they can report to concerned education office with regard to sub-contracting of teaching, unauthorized leave, any illegal payment demanded by the teachers or any other exploitative or corrupt practices.
• The project also activates parents-teachers association. In many places where parents-teachers associations do not exist, the project facilitates formation of such associations.
• It was observed that mothers' play an important role in making decisions on whether to send children to schools. Therefore, the project also facilitates formation of Mothers Groups with dual purposes. Mothers are not only motivated to send their children to schools but also to act as an informal ?watch dog? on schools. They are provided with information such student enrollment and attendance. Mothers are better placed to get feedback from their children on the quality of teaching, teachers' attendance etc. This also helps to identify dropouts; reasons behind dropouts and to some extent prevent registering false names of the same student in multiple schools.
• The project advocates with the concerned department for making it mandatory for teachers to stay at their posting places. Another issue, which the project advocates for is to give preference to those teachers who know and can speak local language when it comes to posting at CHT schools.
• The project works with the education department, and Hill District Councils and encourages concerned personnel for undertaking field visits to schools and cross check to reports sent regularly from schools.
• The project facilitated to introduce a new practice of submitting reports to officials at multiple levels, including district officials to keep them updated on the school status.
• The project closely monitors to ensure that all the children of CHOLEN schools receive books supplied by the government free of charge. In cases of community schools the partnering NGOs distribute free books to students.
• The project is engaged in continuous dialogue and discussion with concerned officials at multiple levels of relevant organizations e.g. Hill District Council, Primary Education Officials at central and local levels. CARE's involvement in improving access to and quality of primary education to some extent deters the concerned officials to indulge in corruption and mal practices at least.
• CHOLEN also motivate teachers to refrain from mal practices such as inflated reporting on enrollment and attendance and aware the community leaders on harmful effects of current mal practices and corruption and encourage them to undertake collective actions to address these.

CARE organized a workshop (18 November, 2003) with all implementing partners (6 NGOs) of CHOLEN project and discussed on school governance with emphasis on performance of School Management Committees and presence of teachers. The participants identified some gaps and mismanagement in the schools that need to be addressed in order to ensure quality education for the rural children of CHT. For example, there are six schools under CHOLEN project with sub-contract teachers (who are appointed by the teacher to serve in absence of him or her), some schools have children enrolled who never come to school, etc.

In a participatory manner with the partner organizations the project identified three most priority actions to address the governance issues in schools of CHOLEN project, these are:

1. Organize meeting with government officials (DPE) and Teacher Association to discuss on the identified issues to look for joint actions in overcoming the situation.
2. Hang photographs of all appointed teachers in the schools.
3. Identify the schools where the SMCs need to be strengthened with regard to school governance and give more attention to them in terms of community mobilization.

In the same workshop an exercise was done to identify the SMCs that need more attention to improve their governance system. Participants assessed the school management committees according to five indicators and four point rating scale as follows for each primary target school.

Suggestions for Improvement

The participants decided to take the following initiatives to strengthen governance issues in CHOLEN schools:

1. Give more attention to the SMCs which scored less than 25 in the ratings.
2. Attend meetings of identified SMCs which are weak.
3. Discuss the roles and responsibilities of SMC with members and make an action plan for at least three months.
4. Discuss negative effects of sub-contracts of teachers and motivate them to take appropriate action.
5. Reform any SMCs that have or encourages corrupt practices
6. Facilitate linkages with local authorities.
7. Follow-up decisions made by the SMCs and if possible be present when decisions are being implemented.
8. Increase community's awareness on Roles and Responsibilities of SMC, PTA and MG.
9. Facilitate teachers to organize ?Parents Day' in the schools to discuss on children's performance and school's status.

Suggestions for Improvement

The various initiatives taken by the project has contributed, directly or indirectly, to some of the recent changes are observed to improve the situation in primary schools in CHT.

• In schools under CHOLEN project there are no more sub-contract teachers; any additional teacher required by the school is appointed by the community, teachers no more can pay some one to work as substitute.
• Some of the teachers who were enjoying long-term unauthorized leave were called back or given warning letters and their attendance are being observed.
• New recruitments are taking place in the vacant posts and posting is made according to proficiency of community language.
• SMCs are observing the enrollment data prepared by teachers to ensure accurate information recording.
• Attendance of teachers and students are increasing.
• Many schools have started displaying teacher's photographs on board

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