Enhancing transparency in school management to develop collaboration between school and local community: Evidence from Madagascar

Last registered on February 02, 2024

Pre-Trial

General Information

Title

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0012922

Initial registration date

January 31, 2024

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

February 02, 2024, 4:20 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country

Madagascar

Region

Sava region

Primary Investigator

Name

Takao Maruyama

Affiliation

Japan International Cooperation Agency

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Kengo Igei

PI Affiliation

Keio University

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2024-05-15

End date

2027-05-15

Keywords

Education

Additional Keywords

Corruption, Institutional Trust, Transparency in School Management, and Educational Development

JEL code(s)

I28 and O15

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

While the international community strives to improve access, quality, and equity of basic education, community participation has a great potential to realize and sustain educational development, especially in the countries where the administration capacity is weak. In sub-Saharan Africa, the school management committee (SMC) has been introduced as an institution to invite parents and local community members to school management since the mid-1990s. While the introduction of the SMCs aimed to realize educational development with the participation of the local community, the functionality of SMCs remained low for various reasons, including the elite capture of the organization and the lack of transparency in school management.

In Madagascar, the SMC was introduced in 2002 and the school grant has been annually distributed to the SMCs from the government to support the operation of schools; however, the transparency of the resource use of the SMC remained low and the SMCs did not gain a trust from the local community. In 2015, the government revised the institutional framework of SMC to promote the participation of the local community in school management. To operationalize the SMC reform, the Ministry of Education developed a package of interventions to improve the functionality of SMC with technical cooperation from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

This study sheds light on the transparency in school management to develop collaboration between the school and the local community. Specifically, this study mainly examines the following questions using a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT).

- Does the package of interventions developed in Madagascar enhance the transparency in the decision-making in the school management? Does the package of interventions enhance the collaboration between the school and the local community?
- Does the package of the interventions enhance the transparency in the management of school resources, such as the school grant? Does the package of interventions reduce the misuse of the school resources?
- Does the package of interventions develop the trust between school and local community?

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Igei, Kengo and Takao Maruyama. 2024. "Enhancing transparency in school management to develop collaboration between school and local community: Evidence from Madagascar." AEA RCT Registry. February 02. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.12922-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Partner

Name

Ministry of Education in Madagascar

Type

government

URL

https://www.education.gov.mg/

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

The package of interventions in Madagascar comprises three sessions of training: (a) training for school principal on the democratic establishment of SMC by secret ballot election, (b) training for democratically-elected executive members of SMC on the participatory development of the school action plan cycle, and (c) training for the SMC executive members on the resource management, including external resources such as school grant. The school action plan includes a list of activities using voluntary contributions from parents and local community members as well as external resources, including a school grant. The secret ballot election aims to (re-)establish SMC with leadership for educational development, incorporating existing organizations such as a parent association.

The democratically-elected SMC bureau is trained to develop a school action plan through information-sharing and discussions at the community general assembly. In the package of interventions developed in Madagascar, the community general assemblies are organized by the democratically-established SMC stepwise to implement the school action plan cycle: (i) information-sharing on the local education and discussion on the school action plan, (ii) adoption of the school action plan, and (iii) mid-term and annual reviews of the school action plan. In the general assemblies, everyone in the school and the local community can participate, and the SMC bureau facilitates information-sharing and discussions to develop the collaboration between the school and the local community.

The third session of training in the package aims to strengthen the capacity of the SMC bureau in the two aspects: (a) to manage resources and keep accounting book, and (b) to share the information on the use of mobilized resources and the results in the community general assemblies. Regarding the external resource such as school grant, the SMC bureau is trained to conduct the information-sharing stepwise: (a) pre-announcement of the amount of upcoming external resources and the schedule, (b) announcement of the received amount of the resources, (c) discussion on how to use the resources, (d) announcement of the purchase using the resources by showing the purchased materials, and (e) reporting the results of the activities using the purchased materials. The information-sharing process is integrated into the action plan cycle and is called “community audit.”

Intervention Start Date

2024-10-15

Intervention End Date

2025-01-15

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Transparency in the establishment of the SMC, Transparency in the decision-making, Transparency in the resources management, Trust, and collaboration between the school and the local community

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Transparency in the establishment of the SMC
- How the selection process is informed for the local community, and whether the process was opened for the local community.
- The participants who are involved in the selection process of the SMC bureau, and the selection method of the SMC bureau.
- The membership of the SMC (whether the local community member other than the parents are involved).

Transparency in the decision-making
- The topics of the shared information on education.
- The items for decision-making which the local community was involved (e.g., payment of FRAM teacher salary), the degree of participation, and the modality of the decision-making.
- The integration of different plans related to the school management, and plans of parents’ association).

Transparency in the resources management
- The gap between the received and disbursed amount with supporting documents of the school grant.
- The gap between the received and disbursed amount with supporting documents of the mobilized resource from the parents and local community members.
- The frequency and content of information-sharing on school resources from the school and SMC, and the degree of the participation of the local community to the information-sharing.

Trust
- The perception of the parents and the local community members on the competence (responsiveness and reliability) and value (integrity, openness, and fairness) of the SMC bureau.
- The perception of the parents and the local community members on the feasibility of the collaboration between the school and the local community and the collaboration among local community members.
- Total amount of the voluntary resources mobilized from the local community for the joint action of the school and the local community.

Collaboration between the school and the local community
- The number of planned and implemented activities for local education in which both the school and the local community are involved.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Intrinsic motivations of the SMC bureau, and Educational performance

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

The experiment in this study simply sets two arms: treatment and control groups. Half of the schools are randomly assigned to the treatment group, and the rest are the control group. The schools in the treatment group receive the package of interventions. Regarding the interventions for the control group, there are two possible options: (a) no interventions are provided, or (b) only the first (or first and second) session(s) of training are provided. Alternative design would divide the surveyed schools into three groups: treatment group A (receiving the whole sessions of training), treatment group B (receiving only the first or the first and second sessions of training), and the control group (receiving no interventions). The number of arms and the arrangement of treatment will be fixed after the baseline survey, considering the budgetary constraint of this study.

Experimental Design Details

Not available

Randomization Method

Randomization is done in office by a computer.

Randomization Unit

The unit of interventions in this experiment is public primary school.

Was the treatment clustered?

Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

180 schools.

Sample size: planned number of observations

180 schools, 1440 parents, and 1440 local community members.

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

90 schools, 720 parents, and 720 local community members.

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Regarding the school-level outcome, when the number of schools is respectively 75 in the treatment and the control groups, the minimum detectable effect (MDE) for the continuous variables is 0.46 standard deviations (sd.) (alpha=0.05, two-sided, and beta=0.8), and the MDE for the percentage change is 22 percentage points (alpha=0.05, two-sided, beta=0.8, the percentage points in the control group=50%). With regard to the outcomes for parents and the local community member, the MDE for continuous variable is 0.25 sd. (alpha=0.05, beta=0.8, intra-cluster correlation coefficient=0.3, and two-sided), and the MDE for the percentage change is 13.2 percentage points (alpha=0.05, two-sided, beta=0.8, intra-cluster correlation coefficient=0.3, the percentage points in the control group=50%). For the list experiment for the parents and the local community members, the MDE is 14 percentage points.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name

IRB Approval Date

IRB Approval Number

Analysis Plan