33 Community based Structures for School Governance

Ms. Parul Aggarwal

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction

2. Learning Outcomes

3. School Governance

3.1 Major Characteristics of Good School Governance

4. Major Participants (Stakeholders) who play important role in School Governance

5. Role of Community Based Structures for School Governance Conclusion

INTRODUCTION

Community Structures are the important part of many social, biological and technological networks. Community detection and analysis is an important methodology for understanding the organization of various real world levels and has applications in problems as diverse as consensus formation in social communities. The success of every school depends on the way it is managed. The need for the efficient management of schools has placed much more emphasis on the nature and quality of the work of the head as the leader of a team of professional educators, and as the manager of the supply and effective use of resources (human, financial and material). The head, therefore, needs to gain clear understanding of all the forces and factors, which contribute towards governance of the school. The public private partnership plays a significant role in school governance and gives strengthening to education system.

2. LEARNING OUTCOMES

After studying this module, you should be able to

Explain the meaning/ concept of School Governance
Elucidate the meaning/concept of Community Based Structures
Discuss the role of main stakeholders in School Governance
Enumerate the Structure of various Communities
Discuss the Role of Community Based Structures in School Governance

3. SCHOOL GOVERNANCE

The word “governance” means the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented (or not implemented). Governance can be used in several contexts such as school governance, local governance and corporate governance. School governance involves making decisions on:

Goals, aims and objectives
Management strategies – how things should be done (the do’s and dont’s)
Formulation of policies
Plans and budgets
Accountability and reporting mechanisms
Information sharing systems
Power relations in the running of the school.
Allocation, utilisation and generation of resources.
Determination and enforcement of rules, procedures and guidelines.
Stakeholder participation and community-school relations
Curriculum content and delivery approaches
Learning and teaching resources

3.1 Major Characteristics of Good School Governance

Partizipation: Participation by parents, teachers, community members and pupils is a key cornerstone of good school governance.

Rule of law: Good school governance requires fair legal frameworks that are enforced impartially. It also requires promotion or protection of human rights.

Transparency: Transparency means that decisions taken and their enforcement are done in a manner that follows rules and regulations of the school. It also means that information is freely available and directly accessible to those who will be affected by such decisions and their enforcement, e.g. parents, teachers, pupils and sponsors

Responsiveness: Good school governance requires that school organs and processes try to serve all stakeholders, especially parents, teachers and pupils within a reasonable timeframe.

Consensus oriented: Good school governance requires mediation of the different interests in school to reach a broad consensus on what is in the best interest of the whole school community and how this can be achieved.

Equity and inclusiveness: Ensuring that all members of the school community feel that they have a stake in it and do not feel excluded from the mainstream. This requires all groups, but particularly the most vulnerable, to have opportunities to improve or maintain their well-being.

Effectiveness and efficiency : The concept of efficiency in the context of good school governance also covers the sustainable use of resources and the protection of the environment.

Accountability: In general, an organisation or an institution is accountable to those who will be affected by its decisions or actions.

4. MAJOR PARTICIPANTS (STAKEHOLDERS) WHO PLAY IMPORTANT ROLE IN SCHOOL GOVERNANCE

In education, the term stakeholder typically refers to anyone who is involved in the welfare and success of a school and its students, including administrators, teachers, staff members, students, parents, families, community members, local business leaders, and elected officials such as school board members, city councillors, and state representatives. Stakeholders may also be collective entities, such as local businesses, organisations, advocacy groups, committees, media outlets, and cultural institutions, in addition to organisations that represent specific groups, such as teachers unions, parent-teacher organisations, and associations representing superintendents, principals, school boards, or teachers in specific academic disciplines.

In a word, stakeholders have a “stake” in the school and its students, meaning that they have personal, professional, civic, or financial interest or concern. The major participants in school governance are:

a) The Headmaster/ Head Teache r

The Headmaster is the key to a well- managed school. A motivated and highly committed head of the school can bring a big difference. A combination of a good HM and a team of good teachers is the ultimate formula of a well- managed, sensitive and engaged school.

b) Parents

Parents’ involvement and partnership includes accepting obligations, responsibilities and participating in education and activities within the school. These may include

Parent supporting their child’s schooling by attending school functions and responding to school obligations.
Helping their children improve schoolwork by encouragement, arranging appropriate study time and space and monitoring homework
Playing roles in governance and making decisions on planning and development of the school and education

c) Community

By building stronger links between the school and the community, the benefits of having a school will be shared, while at the same time community members will feel more ownership of the school itself. A joint community-school meeting could be held, to discuss these issues outlined above. This could then inspire a discussion on how they would like to see the school used to serve the local community, thinking how they could feel ownership of the school while extending their own learning processes.

d) School Managing Committee (SMCs) and Parents Teachers Associations(PTAs)

In general terms SMCs have a role in school governance, in policy making, planning and budgetary allocations. They involve a range of people including local community members, education officers, head teachers, parents and local government representatives among others. On the other hand, PTAs tend to help with resource mobilisation, running social events for parents and pupils, running clubs for extra-curricular activities, e.g. sports or music extravaganzas, organise meetings to inform parents about educational issues.

e) NGO’s (Non-Governmental Organisation) and Community based organisations (CBOs)

Civil Society Institutions (CSIs), Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) and

Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) are the main stakeholders of school governance and play an important role in quality management. Community based organisations (CBO’s) are nonprofit groups that work at a local level to improve life for residents. The focus is to build equality across society in all streams – healthcare, environment, quality of education, access to technology, access to spaces and information for the disabled, Organising people into groups has wide-ranging advantages to the community in specific, and the society in general. Once the people are organised, they can be made actively aware as regard to their rights, contributions, responsibilities, and so on.

5. ROLE OF COMMUNITY BASED STRUCTURES FOR SCHOOL GOVERNANCE

Education takes place not only in schools but also within families, communities and society. Despite the various degree of responsibilities taken by each group, none can be the sole agent to take 100% responsibility for educating children. Parents and families cannot be the only group of people for children’s education as long as their children interact with and learn from the world outside their families. Communities and society must support parents and families in the upbringing, socialising and educating of their children. Schools are institutions that can prepare children to contribute to the betterment of the society in which they operate, by equipping them with skills important in society. Schools cannot and should not operate as separate entities within the society.

Community

Community can be defined by characteristics that the members share, such as culture, language, tradition, law, geography, class and race. Some communities are homogenous while others are heterogenous and some united while others conflictive. Some communities are governed and managed by leaders chosen democratically who act relatively autonomously from other levels of government and some are governed by leaders imposed from above and represent central authorities.

There are three aspects of communities. First, community is a group structure, whether formally or informally organised, in which members play roles which are integrated around goals associated with the problems from collective occupation and utilisation of habitation space. Second, members of the community have some degree of collective identification with the occupied space. Lastly, the community has a degree of local autonomy and responsibility.

There are basically three different types of communities. The first one is geographic community, which is defined according to its member’s place of residence, such as village or district. The second type is ethnic, racial and religious identification and commonly cuts across membership based on geographic location. The third one is communities based on shared family or educational concerns, which include parents associations and similar bodies that are based on families shared concern for the welfare of students.

Community Structures

Community structures are quite common in real networks. Social networks include community groups (the origin of the term, in fact) based on common location, interests, occupation, etc. Metabolic networks have communities based on functional groupings. Citation networks form communities by research topic. Being able to identify these sub-structures within a network can provide insight into how network function and topology affect each other. Such insight can be useful in improving some algorithms on graphs such as spectral clustering.

Community based structures are informal social network ties, which are a part of social capital, can help bring about this participatory development. Collective action formed by membership in these structures and informal social network ties drives household decisions at micro and macro levels for better or for worse. This includes decision to invest in human capital, which here means child health and education. Thus, accessing community resources through social capital in turn may help in human capital development, which is a crucial part of inclusive growth. Since the future of the country depends upon its human capital, there is a need to focus on its qualitative development.

In the words of Dongier et. al, “Community based structures are generally membership organisations consisting of group of individuals in a self defined community who have joined together to further common interests. They often consist of people living in close proximity to each other. The common interest includes production, consumption, pooled resources or delivery of services”. Organisations such as women groups, credit/saving groups, youth clubs, cooperative groups, religious groups, caste associations and local NGOs all of these are included in community based structures.

A community project (for example, Uthan) can reach out to socially deprived children and connect them to the school. However, the response of the school depends on the sensitivity of teachers to extremely deprived children and the individual motivation of the head master/ head mistress. Role of communities in providing infrastructure and more recently in managing and funding schools was formally introduced under DPEP and formalised under SSA. Decentralised management and supervision of civil works and maintenance is reported as one of the important activities of school based committees.

In some states, they also help identify/ recruit local teachers in order to augment teaching resources. The Panchayat can mobilise and channel resources to the school like providing newspapers and books (Bihar, Gujarat), provide incentives (Tamil Nadu), ensure hygienic environment and sumptuous midday- meal (supplement with fish, eggs, etc. in MP and Kerala). An engaged committee or Panchayat can not only ensure enrolment of all children, but also make sure children and teachers attend regularly (Nagaland).

However, some schools in many states have been able to mobilise additional resources from the community or the district administration/ M unicipal Corporation to augment infrastructure or to ensure proper maintenance.

Enrolment of children has improved because of community mobilisation efforts, special enrolment drives and focused programmes for specific groups of children (Badi Baat Andhra Pradesh, inclusion of CWSN children in Chennai Corporation, Prabhat Pheri in Madhya Pradesh). Enrolment and retention rates have improved across the country and SSA documentation reveals that regular enrolment drives and involvement of the community has led to greater number of children coming into the school system.

Major characteristics of Community based structures are as follows:

These groups are formed and managed by people at the local level without any interference from government agencies.
These organisations work in close cooperation with locals and are important players in local development processes.
The activities involve, satisfying the needs of rural communities and decisions are reached mainly through face-to-face interactions.
These organisations are established and managed by members largely and the development activities too, are performed by members themselves.
Promoting government-community partnership at the grassroots,
Empowering the community by delegating management and supervision of government schools to the VEC.

State Policies and Practices regarding the CBOs and their role in School Governance (Promoting decentralized

school governance for quality inclusive education)

Sr No.	State	Policy/ Program/ Practices Regarding CBO	Role in School Governance
1	Nagaland	Nagaland Communitisation of Public Institution and Services Act, 2002	VEC is selected by Village development Board and has powers to monitor teacher attendance (no work no pay rule), pay/ withhold salary and monitor school level grants. Managing school grants, including teacher grants. Financial and administrative monitoring supervise mid day meals (through women’s group)
2	Kerala	Drives for parental awareness and literacy by school teachers, Eco-consciousness among school managements. Kerala Panchayat Act Amended 1999.	All funds routed through Panchayat, some of them allocate more resources. Panchayat Education Committee monitors schools including utilisation of resources. HMs present status report to PEC at regular intervals.
3	Bihar	Utthan programme to address inclusion of Maha Dalit (Musahar)	Tola Sevak interface between families and school, escort, provide academic support and motivation to enrol, attend and learn
4	Karnataka	Namma Shaale (My school), a school community connect programme since 2007 (in 4 clusters).	An SSA-APF joint initiative in the state of Karnataka, with support from KSTC (Karnataka State Trainers’ collective). Proactive engagement with community of Parents, Panchayat, school and local NGOs/ facilitators to build ownership and enhance quality.
5	Madhya Pradesh	Jan Shiksha Adhiniyam (1998) the overarching framework and power to manage school devolved to Panchayat in 2002.	Palak Shikshak Sangh (PTA) to oversee school functioning, help identify CWSN and also inclusion of girls through Mahila Shikshan Abhiyan and Ma Beti Sammelan
6	Tamil Nadu	Activity Based Learning (since 2005)	Child centred and activity based pedagogy has re- energised the school and provides for multi level learning in the classroom. Has been very effective in integrating CWSN in the school with all children
7	Gujarat	Legislative approval for Village Education Committee and Ward Education Committee in 2003. Training of HMs initiated in Collaboration with IIM.	Clear delineation of roles of different decentralised structures–district, Taluka and Village. With exception of teacher salaries all funds transferred to school
8	Andhra Prsdesh	Efforts in promoting MLE (Multi- lingual Education); Preparation of MLE Primers; KGBV identified as a best practice in the country; Under RTE, Academic Monitoring Committees have been notified in 2010. Extended statutory status to these committees and schools treated as community assets.	The AMCs yet to take off. KGBV well run and managed, with great autonomy and extended up to class 10.

*Source: Study of NUEPA 2010

Conclusion

Thus, identifying the sub-structures within a network can provide insight into how network function and topology affect each other. These are informal social network ties, which are a part of social capital, can help bring about this participatory development. Collective action formed by membership in these structures and informal social network ties drives household decisions at micro and macro levels for better or for worse. Since the future of the country depends upon its human capital, there is a need to focus on its qualitative development.

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