Over the last two decades a considerable number of countries have seen an increasing trend of decentralised educational governance where authority for a range of decision making is shifted to individual schools and communities.

A common belief among the supporters of decentralisation is that empowering and delegating authority to individual schools will enhance the quality, effectiveness, responsiveness and receptiveness of public education to ever changing educational needs of learners and communities at large.

Educational governance is not a linear and unitary process therefore it could be applied to different areas of teaching and learning processes in consideration of the nature and unique requirements of each component and context. Each key area of the educational process such as curriculum making, assessment procedures, financial and personnel management, general administration, and infrastructure development demands a peculiar approach to make them efficient and effective.

Research studies have revealed that the impact of decentralisation of education of students’ learning outcomes is minimal. However, the impact of decentralisation of education is greater if it is being part of a comprehensive policy package and implemented with due consideration to the role of a central authority, importantly in monitoring quality of service delivery and allocation of resources.

The term “governance” has become a buzz word in all spheres of society either stating in the form of “good governance” or “bad governance”. A key reason for the recent popularity of this concept is probably “its capacity — unlike that of the narrow term government — to cover the whole range of institutions and relations involved in the process of governing.” (Pierre and Peters).

However, at the same time the concept of governance is notoriously slippery which is used very commonly by both academicians and practitioners without any agreed upon definition. A more agreeable definition has been forwarded by Kooiman, where he states that social-political governance implies to “arrangements in which public as well as private actors aim at solving problems or create societal opportunities, and aim at the core of the societal institutions within which these governing activities take place.”

An effective governance structure will entail a balanced integration of both state and private-sector, diffusion of all given responsibilities and authority to non-state entities. It will only seek profits not the welfare part of society, an important element in the context of a developing world such as Pakistan.

To meet the educational targets each successive government in Pakistan has introduced various policies and programmes that includes attempts to improve the governance structure of education. A major breakthrough occurred when in 2001 in order to improve the overall social-economic conditions including education the government of Pakistan introduced the devolution programme.

The 18th constitutional amendment has further strengthened the process of devolution where the portfolio of education is shifted completely from the federal to the provincial movement. Under the devolution programme the concept of School Management Committees (SMCs) was introduced with a view that the communities will take the responsibility of monitoring the enrollment and attendance of students, teachers’ attendance, quality of teaching and learning, and maintenance and provision of school infrastructures.

At the same time, a small but important financial grant on an annual basis was also being provided to SMCs to carry out the given tasks. Consequently it was assumed that the shift of responsibility to the communities would improve the quality of education and will remove many ills existing in the education system of Pakistan.

The effectiveness of educational governance in schools has been based on studying the differences in students’ learning outcomes. Down the road after a decade of devolution programmes, various research findings show that the quality of education, both in terms of teaching and learning and enrollment of students in the public schools, has deteriorated rather than improving.

A baseline survey report published in 2011 by Aga Khan University-Institute for Educational Development (AKU-IED) under the Strengthening Teacher Education in Pakistan (STEP) project points toward the fact that only 17pc students of grade four and five have scored passing marks in a standardised test conducted in Sindh and Balochistan. Only 56pc enrolled students attend the school, while in the same schools 70pc teachers teach only for 15 minutes during a 35-minute period. Monitoring of the schools tells a more pathetic story where only 29pc schools have ever been visited in a year by any government district official.

Why did the devolution programme in Pakistan failed to achieve its desired results contrary to its stipulated goals and objectives conceived by the policy makers? The devolution programme which is adopted in Pakistan was originated in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries under the neo-liberal economic forces in the 1980s where the governance infrastructure is highly effective in contrast to developing countries such as Pakistan.

The success of decentralisation of education is still debatable even in the European context and its imposition on the developing world is highly questionable. In Pakistan the devolution of educational governance is facing a number of issues but there are three key challenges, first the accountability of schools was the job of a trained education manager which has now shifted outward to parents and local community who lack the capacity, skills and required tools to systematically monitor teaching and learning.

Second, allocation of operating budgets was the responsibility of district administration where in the case of corruption it was easier to make accountable the concerned but the dispersed allocation of funds to SMCs has made it difficult rather impossible to make the district administration accountable for budgetary malpractices.

Third, the overall administration of schools including decisions on curriculum delivery, selection of the medium of instruction, teachers performance and attendance, decision regarding the assessment of students and cocurricular activities have been left completely as a prerogative of head teachers or principals who were either not properly trained to carry out these tasks and in most cases, political appointees.

A gross combination, these factors have made public schools in most of the rural areas of Sindh and Balochistan more like abandoned street children where neither the private sector nor state seems to have any existence. This situation warrants an emergency response to correct and improve the dismal level of quality of education to an acceptable level.

It is interesting to note that the OECD framework of decentralisation too makes no explicit mention of decision-making regarding financial management, curriculum development and the rigorous monitoring of the school and its infrastructure either by parents or community. The approach of completely letting the schools to be run by the community seems to be a unique case in Pakistan which has failed to serve the purpose.

The results of extensively researched Chicago School Districts inform that the decentralisation process should be gradual wherein the first phase reforms involved decentralisation of authority to school sites and then in the second phase involved strengthening the authority for accountability at the central level. This process is referred to as “integrated governance” which creates the appropriate level of balance of pressure and support to ensure sustainability of reforms.

In the context of Pakistan, it is highly suggested to make distinctions within the schools between formal and informal level of responsibility. The parents and community could be made part of the decision-making process but they could not be designated solely responsible for financial management, monitoring school and teachers’ performance and the general administration of the schools in a formal way, in particular, where parents lack both socio-cultural and economic capital and are too dependent on the powerful landlords, wadera, pirs and sardars in their decision-making.

The state must exercise its leverage in a centralised way by taking full and complete responsibility for effective monitoring, financial management and allocation of funds and resources, curriculum development and general administration of school infrastructure and required human resources such as appointment of teachers and head teachers.

To conclude “decentralisation” of governance is far from being a one-dimensional approach and it requires a strong presence of centralised decision-making as well as opportunities for participative decision-making in order to create ownership. Even the non-government school sector and the private school systems which are currently enrolling over 30pc of students and where the quality of education is far better in the majority of cases as compared to that of public schools also provides a model of integrated governance. Both systems imply to a balanced approach where school autonomy, community involvement in non-academic activities and centralised decision-making in monitoring service delivery and resource allocation are common norms of successful schooling.

The writer is an educational development researcher.

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