34 Role of Non-Government Organisation (NGOs) AND COMMUNITY BASED ORGANISATIONS (CBOs) IN SCHOOL GOVERNANCE

Prof. Surinder Kaur

1. Introduction

2. Learning Outcomes

3. School Governance

4. Major Participants (Stakeholders) who play important role in school governance

5. Role of NGO’s and CBO’s in school governance

6. Important NGOs in the field of Education (International)

7. Indian NGO’s who are playing crucial role in school governance

8. Community based organisations (CBOs) and its role is school governance Summary

1. INTRODUCTION

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. In the present scenario where government especially focuses on marginalised groups of the society, NGOs and CBOs also give attention to these groups. The public private partnership plays significant role in school governance and gives strengthening to education system as a whole.

2. LEARNING OUTCOMES

After studying this module, you should be able to

● Explain the meaning/concept of School Governance

● Elucidate the meaning/concept of NGOs and CBOs

● Discuss the role of main stakeholders in school governance

● Describe the significance of NGOs and CBOs

● Give examples of major NGOs at International and National level

● Explain the role of NGOs in school governance

● Enumerate the structure of CBOs

● Discuss the role of CBOs in school governance

3. School Governance

Simply put “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, corporate governance and local governance. School governance involves making decisions on:

● Goals, aims and objectives related to school education

● Management strategies – how things should be done (the do’s and don’t’s)

● Formulation of policies

● Making 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 maintaining community-school relationship

● Curriculum content and delivery approaches

● Learning and teaching resources

3.1 Major Characteristics of Good School Governance

● Participation: 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 invested 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 a nd its students, meaning that they have personal, professional, civic, or financial interest or concern. The major participants in school governance are-

Figure 4.1. Major Participants in School Governance

a) The Headmaster/Head Teacher

The Headmaster is the key to a well- managed school. A motivated and highly committed head of the school can and does make 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:

Parents 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 co mmunity-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 extend ing 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 inc luding 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 NGO’s and CBO’s in School Governance

NGO’s are the voluntary organisations and without profit- making objectives. These take active part in cultural promotion, education, health, and natural disaster relief. They proliferated in India during British rule, working to improve social welfare and literacy and pursuing relief projects. During the second half of the 19th century, nationalist consciousness spread across India and self- help emerged as the primary focus of socio-political movements. Numerous organisations were established during this period, including the Friend-in-Need Society (1858), Prathana Samaj (1864), Satya Shodhan Samaj (1873), Arya Samaj (1875), the National Council for Women in India (1875), and the Indian National Conference (1887). The Central Social Welfare Board was established in 1953 to promote social welfare activities and support people’s participation programs through NGOs. This additional funding and recognition led to a growing body of professional NGOs. The Government of India decentralised development activities througho ut the 1950s. The establishment of the National Community Development Program and the National Extension Service were early steps in this direction. Further decentralisation was achieved with the introduction of the three-tier Panchayati Raj system in 1958. In 1958, the Association for Voluntary Agencies for Rural Development (AVARD) was founded as a consortium of major voluntary agencies. ADB (Asian Development Bank) recognises NGOs as significant players in the development process and cooperates with them to improve the impact, sustainability, and quality of its services.

Figure 5.1. Role of NGOs and CBOs in School Governance

NGOs provide value in promoting sustainable development through

Innovation – identifying new approaches and models for specific de velopment activities and drawing upon their close knowledge of local communities

Accountability – ensuring the project components are implemented as envisaged and planned

Responsiveness – encouraging the implementation of projects to respond to local needs

Participation – serving as bridges between project authorities and affected communities, and providing structures for citizen participation

Sustainability – nurturing continuity in project work, especially when the implementing agencies lack capacity or when staffing changes

The NGOs can be classified into various types based on different factors like orientation or level of cooperation.

Figure 5.2. Classification of NGOs

NGO type by orientation can be grouped into charitable orientation; Service orientation; Participatory orientation; and Empowering orientation.
NGO type by level of co-operation can be grouped into Community- Based Organisation; City Wide Organisation; National NGOs; and International NGOs.

6. Important NGOs in the field of Education (International)

● Education without Border

● Say Yes to Education

● Civicus

● Canadian Human Rights Foundation

● Barnard van Leer Foundation

● BRAC

● Aga Khan Foundation

● Open Society Institute

● Agency for the Development of Women and Children (ADWAC)

● Association of Farmers, Education, and Traders (AFET)

● Youth for Understanding

7. Indian NGO’s who are playing Crucial Role in School Governance

(i) Pratham – is widely held to be India’s largest NGO in the education sector, in terms of the number of children assisted. Read India, its flagship programme, aims to improve basic literacy and the mathematical abilities of underprivileged children. In 2011, Read India worked with nearly 2.4 million children and trained more than 60,000 teachers.

(ii) The Azim Premji Foundation – established in 2001, works with state governments to reform teaching and testing methods in government schools. Following the charity’s efforts to promote examination systems that go beyond testing rote learning. The foundation also has provided 20,000 schools across 16 states with syllabus-based multimedia kits that promote computer-assisted learning.

(iii) Akshaya Patra – is a large NGO with one goal, to provide children with a meal at school. The charity launched its first programme in Bangalore in 2000 and today provides lunch to 1.3 million children daily across the country. This simple initiative addresses two major issues: It boosts school attendance and tackles malnutrition. Akshaya Patra works with eight state governments to implement its school lunch programme and has inspired other NGOs to launch similar efforts.

(iv) Muktangan – demonstrates how smaller scale NGOs also can have a significant impact on their chosen community or city. This project draws women from low-income communities in Mumbai and trains them as English-medium teachers. Since its founding in 2003, Muktangan has trained 180 teachers.

(v) Teach For India – ‘One day all children will attain an excellent education’- a vision that defines Teach For India, a ‘Teach To Lead’ project that encourages young college graduates and professionals to take up two years of full- time teaching sessions in under-resourced schools.

(vi) Make A Difference (MAD) – Along with education partner, Cambridge University Press, ‘Make A Difference’ or MAD has initiated a unique project ‘The English Project’ to educate children from poor homes, orphanages and street shelters with English.

(vii) Barefoot College-India – this organisation was established in 1972. Today, the organisation trains local community people into teachers, specialised professionals in other fields and has initiated many educational efforts for children.

(viii) Cry – ‘Child rights and you’ or CRY is an NGO in India working for children and their rights. CRY has undertaken many initiatives to improve the condition of underprivileged children and one of them is the ‘Chotte Kadam-Pragati ki Aur’, a literacy drive that has reached out to more than 35000 children in 10 states of India. ‘Mission Education’ is another very popular campaign from CRY to make sure that ‘education is every child’s right’ and that proper education reaches to more children in every new academic year.

8. Community based organizations (CBOs) and its role is School Governance

Community based organisations (CBOs) 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 CBOs 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, “CBOs 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 categorised as community-based organisations.

Major characteristics of CBOs can be stated 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 grassroot level.
Empowering the community by delegating management and supervision of government schools to the VEC.

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 mid-day meal (supplement with fish, eggs etc. in MP, Kerala). An engaged committee or Panchayat can not only ensure enrollment 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/ Municipal Corporation to augment infrastructure or to ensure proper maintenance.

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

State Policies and Practices regarding CBO and its role in School Governance (Promoting decentralised school governance for quality inclusive education)

Conclusion

Though community-based organisations (CBOs) and NGOs are small, informal organisations, indications are that they provide various services towards the development of rural communities and can be used as channels to direct development and mediation of other resources required for improving the living conditions in rural communities. CBOs are, however, constrained from providing a more diverse range of services to their communities due to certain basic weaknesses. Leadership development, networking with both local and external organisation. These grass root level organisations support school governance in different mode. The main support includes-

Power and voice : through the help of NGOs and CBOs, parent’s and common person capacity to communicate with each other enhanced and the school authority is strengthened. Although part of the process may be about learning the dynamic of governance, the focus is on using these tools in a meaningful way.
Democratic space: through these grass root level organisations common person’s voice in managing and governing schools is given more weight. The use of various plans actively construct their participation and thus enables them to challenge the dominant powers and relationships.
Orientation to action: Help break silence among parents as they discuss governance issues
Documentation: by encouraging people to put down for posterity and document their perspectives, experiences and initiatives.
Communication: through support of NGOs and CBOs, parents and local citizens are able to communicate effectively with school authorities and amongst themselves.

you can view video on Role of Non-Government Organisation (NGOs) AND COMMUNITY BASED ORGANISATIONS (CBOs) IN SCHOOL GOVERNANCE

Web-links: