Improving Educational Quality through Enhancing Community Participation : Results from a Randomized Field Experiment in Indonesia
This study evaluates the effect of four randomized interventions aimed at strengthening school committees, and subsequently improving learning outcomes, in public primary schools in Indonesia. All study schools were randomly allocated to either a control group receiving no intervention, or to treatment groups receiving a grant plus one or a combination of three interventions: training for school committee members, a democratic election of school committee members, or facilitated collaboration between the school committee and the village council, also called linkage. Nearly two years after implementation, the study finds that measures to reinforce existing school committee structures, the grant and training interventions, demonstrate limited or no effects; while measures that foster outside ties between the school committee and other parties, linkage and election, lead to greater engagement by education stakeholders and in turn to learning. Test scores improve in Indonesian by 0.17 standard deviations for linkage and 0.22 standard deviations for linkage+election. The election intervention alone leads to changes in time household members accompany children studying per week, but this does not lead to learning. Linkage is the most cost effective intervention, causing a 0.13 change in standard deviation in Indonesian test scores for each 100 dollars (US) spent.
Summary: | This study evaluates the effect of four
randomized interventions aimed at strengthening school
committees, and subsequently improving learning outcomes, in
public primary schools in Indonesia. All study schools were
randomly allocated to either a control group receiving no
intervention, or to treatment groups receiving a grant plus
one or a combination of three interventions: training for
school committee members, a democratic election of school
committee members, or facilitated collaboration between the
school committee and the village council, also called
linkage. Nearly two years after implementation, the study
finds that measures to reinforce existing school committee
structures, the grant and training interventions,
demonstrate limited or no effects; while measures that
foster outside ties between the school committee and other
parties, linkage and election, lead to greater engagement by
education stakeholders and in turn to learning. Test scores
improve in Indonesian by 0.17 standard deviations for
linkage and 0.22 standard deviations for linkage+election.
The election intervention alone leads to changes in time
household members accompany children studying per week, but
this does not lead to learning. Linkage is the most cost
effective intervention, causing a 0.13 change in standard
deviation in Indonesian test scores for each 100 dollars
(US) spent. |
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