What is school-based management?

Governments around the world are introducing a range of strategies aimed at improving the financing and delivery of education services. One such strategy is school-based management (SBM). This paper focuses on the concept of SBM and its different forms and dimensions and presents a conceptual framework for understanding it. It defines SBM broadly to include community-based management and parental participation schemes but does not explicitly include stand-alone, or one-off, school grants programmes that are not meant to be permanent alterations in school management.

The paper argues that while SBM is conceptually clear, there are many ways in which its components can be combined and implemented. Pragmatically, this makes SBM a concept that cannot have a unique form in all the places where it is implemented. It further states that each variation has to be appropriate for the particular culture and politics of the country in question. Most countries have adopted SBM to increase the participation of parents and communities in schools, empower principals and teachers, raise student achievement levels, or, by devolution of authority, create accountability mechanisms to make the decision-making process more transparent.

The paper recommends that:

• central governments should make local education authorities more accountable by requiring them to involve all school stakeholders in their discussions and to use their feedback to design policies and interventions that meet local needs
  
• national governments should design prospective impact evaluations of new programmes before they are implemented. Furthermore, they should subject more existing programmes to rigorous impact evaluation
  
• create a group within the Ministry of Education devoted to analysis and research, while at the same time encouraging independent organisations to undertake their own impact evaluations of all programmes
  
• governments, and perhaps international agencies, should spread the word about SBM innovations at the school level and disseminate examples of best practices of SBM programmes from around the world.