About this report

This report presents a regional overview of accountability and transparency in primary education management in seven African countries. It has been produced within the framework of Africa Education Watch (AEW). AEW is a threeyear programme (2007-2010) implemented by Transparency International (TI) that focuses on governance in the management of public funds in the primary education system.

Rationale

Since the late 1990s the management of primary education in much of Africa has been subject to structural changes intended to bring it closer to the ‘user’, and to give citizens at the local level (particularly parents) a greater stake in management. The goal is to increase accountability, oversight and responsiveness. The new administrative and fiscal arrangements have placed more responsibilities on regional, district, communal and school level authorities.

TI’s AEW programme seeks to discover whether these new decentralised systems are effective in controlling malpractice, monitoring the flow of resources, and preventing corruption, resource leakages and delays. Particularly, it asks whether school administration is now a genuinely accountable and participatory governance system.

Methodology

As part of this programme, TI undertook a large-scale assessment of the effectiveness of decentralised accountability structures. It covered seven countries: Ghana, Madagascar, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Uganda. Countries surveyed were selected based on the presence of a TI Chapter in the country with previous experience working on education. Another criterion was representation of socioeconomical and cultural differences.

In each of these countries, the TI Chapters reviewed how primary education is financed and implemented field surveys and interviews to assess the quality of governance in schools and transparency in the management of their resources.

The TI International Secretariat (TI-S) worked closely with TI Chapters on the design of four different survey questionnaires and methodology, as well as on the data quality control process and overall coordination of the work carried out by the chapters. To design the questionnaires, TI drew on input from national and international education experts, civil society activists, and survey experts. All surveys were carried out between March and May 2008 by TI Chapters in the abovementioned countries with the exception of Uganda, where a consulting firm implemented the survey under the supervision of the local TI Chapter.

In each country, four types of respondents were interviewed: households, head teachers, heads of Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs) and local governments (district education officers). A minimum of 60 schools were randomly selected and surveyed. On average, 58 head teachers and 58 heads of PTAs were interviewed in each country. Additionally, at least 1,000 households were selected from the schools’ roster and interviewed. A proportion of those interviewed were also members or heads of the School Management Committees (SMCs). An average of 10 district officials were also interviewed in each country.

Respondents were asked about the existence of channels and mechanisms for voicing opinions and monitoring accountability, the use of such mechanisms by parents, experiences and perceptions of corrupt practices and any other problems they identified at their schools. For detailed information on the methodology used for the surveys, please refer to Annex 2.