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School Management Committees – A Policy Failure in Pakistan Sajjad Ismail (Aug 2, 2020)
School Management Committees – A Policy Failure in Pakistan
By Sajjad Ismail
August 2, 2020
Abstract
Community involvement in the school management in Pakistan was initially introduced in
1990’s. In all subsequent National Education Policies, this has been referred to one or the other
way reiterating government’s commitment. The community involvement strategy, as
contemplated by the authorities, was to form a forum of community nominated parents of the
school children, community elders, and selected schoolteachers to look into the best interests of
the children and take decisions and actions as necessary to improve access and quality of
education. The forum was known as School Management Committee, Parent-Teacher
Association, School Council, etc. depending upon the province. Even after thirty years, these
committees have not been seen ubiquitously present, independent and active, nor the objectives
of the policy seem to be met. This paper critically analyzes the policy at the stages of
development and implementation highlighting the deviations in the policy making process, and
the challenges policy faced during different periods of implementation. In the end, emphasizing
the need for stakeholder consultation, the paper suggests an alternative approach of policy
implementation based on author’s extensive field experience and working with different
communities, organizing, training and mobilizing several hundred School Management
Committees in different parts of Pakistan.
Key words/phrases: Parent teacher associations, school management committees, school
councils, community participation, schools in Pakistan, Pakistan education policy.
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School Management Committees – A Policy Failure in Pakistan Sajjad Ismail (Aug 2, 2020)
Introduction:
Pakistan is one of the countries with poor education indicators. According to UNICEF, “an
estimated 22.8 million children aged 5-16 are out-of-school”
(https://www.unicef.org/pakistan/education). There are supply side and demand side factors
responsible for the large number of children being out of school. On the supply side, poor
governance system that leads to teachers’ absenteeism, poor quality time given in the classroom,
poor infrastructure and particularly non-availability of washroom facilities in girls’ schools, and
overall poor quality of education in public schools are some of the reasons leading to low or no
demand for the education in the rural areas where 70% of the population lives. In urban areas,
over-crowded classrooms, awkward pupil-teacher ratio, political interference in teachers’
postings, and sub-standard teaching quality are the contributing factor to students’ dropout and
poor enrollment.
Involvement of local stakeholders in decision making and monitoring is considered to be a way
of ensuring that the government investments and their benefits reach the poor at the tail end.
Decentralization of authority is a means to include the marginalized groups into decision making
by empowering them. “One solution has been to decentralize authority and accountability to the
lowest levels possible. Within the decentralization framework, community committees are an
important option, and since the 1990s much policy and investment has emphasized community
management” (Shaeffer 1992; UNESCO 2007; World Bank 2007, cited by Abadzi, 2013). “The
primary objectives of the devolution plan and decentralization in education in particular, is to
involve the communities in planning, management, and monitoring and evaluation of service
delivery interventions at the grass roots level. In the education sector, the inherent problems of
absenteeism, dropouts, adult illiteracy, and unsatisfactory performance of schools can be
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School Management Committees – A Policy Failure in Pakistan Sajjad Ismail (Aug 2, 2020)
addressed only if the local communities themselves take charge of their development” (Shah,
2003).
Community involvement in the school management in Pakistan was initially introduced in
1990’s. “In 1994 the government of Pakistan established school management councils (SMCs) in
selected schools throughout the country” (Khan, 2007). The idea of community involvement
was brought in early 90’s and the international donors, including the World Bank, committed to
support with financial and technical resources. “Countries have been encouraged to pass laws
that give management committees broad powers to oversee and sometimes pay service providers
in order to increase accountability. The thinking was that empowered communities would act
autonomously, and that participation, monitoring, and advocacy would ensure that services
would reach the poor (OED 2005; World Bank 2004 cited by Abadzi, 2013). The Government of
Pakistan showed its resolve making it part of the education policy in 1992 and reiterating its
commitment in the subsequent policies. Among the salient features of the National Education
Policy (NEP) 1992 was “encouraging community participation in educational affairs” (Report of
the Committee on Education Sector Reforms, 2018
1
). The government of Pakistan, and later the
provincial governments, adopted the policy of community involvement in school management to
address multiple challenges of school governance and education management with a goal to
improve access and quality of education. Since then, community involvement has been part and
parcel of all the education policy documents of the national and provincial governments under
different names and with varied composition. “The School Committees are known by a variety
of names – Village Education Committees (VEC) and Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs) in
NWFP, Parent Teacher School Management Committees (PTSMCs) and VECs in Baluchistan,
1
The committee was formed in 2018.
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School Management Committees – A Policy Failure in Pakistan Sajjad Ismail (Aug 2, 2020)
PTAs in Sindh and School Councils (SCs) in Punjab” (Shah, 2003). “Establish, expand and
strengthen parent-teacher and school community relationship” (National Education Policy 2017:
p-18). The NEP 2017 goes as far as to seeks community support in financing the education at the
local levels. “Additional resources shall be materialized through community involvement. The
community involvement shall be increased especially in need assessment, education process,
preparation of need based development schemes, its implementation, monitoring and evaluation,
etc. Role of SMCs, PTAs, School Councils, etc., shall be revitalized”.
The policy implementation has been followed with varied levels of commitment, enthusiasm,
and support. While the assessment of success or failure of the performance of these bodies is not
within the scope of this study, however, it analyzes the policy development and implementation
process to trace the causes of policy success or failure as a whole. In that sense, this is a mix of
historical, evaluation, and process analyses of the policy. “Good analysis is always grounded in
solid description and historical understanding, though it may focus on logic, efficiency, efficacy,
or ethics” (Pal, 1987). This paper looks into the problem of poor performance of SMCs using the
policy lens, and as Gallagher (1992) says “policy analysis is synonymous with problem solving”,
it may inform the next policy making process.
Literature Review:
This study was initiated with the question: Why the policy of involving local communities into
school management has failed to bring results despite being pursued for over 25 years in
Pakistan?
Using the above-mentioned keywords, I explored online resources including Education
Resources Information Centre (ERIC), Google Scholar, Google open search, and Academia.edu.
I retrieved a total of 23 documents (11 research papers, 3 reports, 5 policy/framework/action
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School Management Committees – A Policy Failure in Pakistan Sajjad Ismail (Aug 2, 2020)
plan, and 3 analyses). Out of these, I used 17 documents based on their relevance to my question
and extracted data for use in this policy analysis discussion.
While there are several documents and reports available acknowledging the failure of periodic
policies with similar objectives, there is no scientific study available to explain the reasons.
There are some studies available that evaluate the performance of SMCs, however, the limitation
of these studies is that either they are very small scale with an extremely small sample size that
cannot be generalized or some others are based on qualitative and impressionistic data of the
functioning of such committees. During my data search, I did not come across any study that can
link the poorly performing SMCs to the overall policy failure and can trace the roots into policy
process itself.
I organized the data by document types as classified above. I further cross-referenced these
documents for the broader policy objectives and the achievements as reported in these
documents. For example, I tried to compare broader decentralization policy with the policy on
School Management Committees, both having a common objective of good governance and
more benefits to the end-user community at the grassroots level. Using the inductive as well as
deductive logic, I related the evidence from the field with the gaps in the larger policy process.
I built my case based on the reports and original policy documents of the Government of
Pakistan that acknowledge the poor and below expectation performance of the School
management Committees and similar forums with different names but same objectives. Then
picking on the key elements that are a must for policy development and implementation, I
discussed them with evidence from other research papers and reports relating to the results of the
gaps in policy development and implementation process.
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School Management Committees – A Policy Failure in Pakistan Sajjad Ismail (Aug 2, 2020)
Discussion:
Since the birth of Pakistan in 1947, education has been one of its priorities. This is evident from
government’s resolve demonstrated through its developing and improving the national education
policies at different intervals. “Periodically, the State of Pakistan addressed the educational needs
of the people and the aspirations of the State in this regard, in 1947, 1951, 1959, 1966, 1969,
1970, 1972, 1979, 1992 and lastly in 1998 [later in 2009 and 2017 two other policy documents
were launched]” (Aly, 2007). Every policy recounts the gaps and challenges of the previous
policy implementation, apparently to inform the development of the new policy. However, much
has not changed and almost all the policies could only meet with partial successes in selected
areas. There have been a number of reasons for this. The one most recurring gap is the absence
of stakeholders’ involvement. There have been no serious efforts seen to involve the stakeholders
at the time of policy drafting and implementation. A few lip-serving casual efforts have been
made sporadically but with little or neither of the instructive, consultative or cooperative
involvement of stakeholders observed. As Sevaly (2001) defines, instructive involvement is
where government makes the decisions, but mechanisms exist for information exchange;
consultative involvement is where government is the decision-maker but stakeholders have a
degree of influence over the process and outcomes; and cooperative involvement is where
primary stakeholders act as partners with government in the decision-making processes. None of
these types of involvement is more desirable than another, or mutually exclusive. Much depends
on the tasks to be undertaken and the political and social norms, as well as the capabilities and
aspirations of the stakeholders themselves.
Stakeholders’ involvement would have been important in this case to know about the
stakeholders’ (communities, teachers, lower tier officials) aspirations, their readiness, and
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School Management Committees – A Policy Failure in Pakistan Sajjad Ismail (Aug 2, 2020)
shortcomings to incorporate in the larger policy decision to introduce community role in the local
school affairs. This could not also be a way to disseminate relevant policy provisions to the
stakeholders but could also have helped developing a workable action plan and winning the
partnership of stakeholders leading to a smooth fruitful implementation. “Good governance, the
promotion of democratization and the transparency of decision-making processes are, therefore,
the context for involving stakeholders in policy-making. Such involvement was regarded as
critical to the development of new partnerships that governments had to forge in order to create
and deliver the benefits of economic and social development. The stakeholder approach argued
that good governance requires political, social and economic priorities to be based on broad
social consensus, and that the poorest and most vulnerable populations should be able to directly
influence political decision-making. This can be achieved by actively involving stakeholders in
decisions that affect their interests. The approach thus assumes that participation will enable
stakeholders to identify their diverse objectives, flag problems and conflicts, and contribute to
their resolution” (Sevaly, 2001).
“To develop a sustainable policy, it is very pertinent that there must be a participation of policy
stakeholders” (Bichard, 1999). According to a former Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan,
the stakeholder consultation is either superficial or the views of the stakeholders, if found at
variance with those of the formulators, do not find any place in the revised documents. The
motions of consultation having been fulfilled, it does not matter whether substantive changes
have been taken cognizance of or not. “The public policies have always been introduced without
consensus of public and seeking necessary information on the ground” (Haq, 2015). This also
holds good for the education policy making process. Without any stakeholder’s involvement at
any level and stage, particularly the communities who would be the eventual beneficiaries of the
policy outcome and the head/teachers who are the frontline implementers, there is a little chance
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School Management Committees – A Policy Failure in Pakistan Sajjad Ismail (Aug 2, 2020)
of success on ground. The policy that is drafted far from the grassroots, behind closed doors at
the federal or provincial level cannot reflect the genuine needs, ground level challenges and
realities, nor the policy action plan can suggest cost-effective, indigenous solutions. No wonder
if the policy fails to bring results in implementation when the officials, administrators and
teachers lack capacity to implement it and the communities see it as ‘their (government’s)’
project. “Effective implementation of policies is aided if the stakeholders have ownership of the
policies. One weakness of the governance regime in Pakistan has been its weak performance in
getting all stakeholders to have a say in policy development” (NEP, 2009: p-30).
There are sporadic and fewer success stories of SMCs but that comes from the additional support
of NGO’s or the proactive role of a very few headteachers, most of whom are also the residents
of the same village/community. “Most cases of success are either owed to a dynamic head
teacher or a local nongovernment organization that provides an interface between community
and the school” (NEP, 2009: p-30). Khan (2007), selecting her sample for the research on SMCs
in Pakistan mentions, “I made an assumption that the presence of NGOs facilitates participation,
which is why I selected public schools partnering with NGOs”.
Another factor responsible for the policy failure in implementation is the technical feasibility.
Doing a logical framework analysis, one would observe many gaps at different levels such as
from inputs to outputs, and from outputs to the purpose level. The theory of change, as Hogwood
and Gunn (1993) mention ‘a valid theory of cause and effect’ looks very weak. The policy itself
carries too many assumptions to support a long cause-effect chain. “… the policy may be based
upon an inadequate understanding of the problem to be solved, its causes and cure, or of an
opportunity, its nature, and what is needed to exploit it” (Delaney, 2002). In successive policies
and proposed actions, there is a little change in the strategy and overall concept. All we see is the
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School Management Committees – A Policy Failure in Pakistan Sajjad Ismail (Aug 2, 2020)
change in the name of the representative body, its composition, and some organizational
adjustments. The policy is over prescriptive as it is followed by a code book that details the
whole process of committee formation, membership criteria, maximum number of members, and
frequency of calling meetings, etc. “Some of the policy documents were results of extensive
research but implementation left so much to be desired that not one policy achieved its declared
goals and the targets of time set for realizing these goals. Firstly, there was no genuine
widespread ownership of policy goals by the majority of stakeholders and secondly, the
strategies and plans developed to achieve the policy goals were unrealistic and did not have the
support of identified and committed resources required to achieve these targets, or an original
tailoring of these goals within the maximum resources available” (Aly, 2007).
The policy implementation had a vertical approach (Colbatch, 1998) and more precisely a top-
down approach (Mazmanman & Sabatier, 1993) as the authorities required compliance from
teachers and headteachers whereas, there was a little capacity on part of teachers and
headteachers to engage with the communities and their mobilization. As Gallagher (1992) says,
administrative operability was lacking. “Also, most head teachers have no training in working
with communities and are unprepared for capitalizing on the potential of SMCs. The main
obstacle to greater success remains the lack of acceptance and comprehension of the concept at
both the community as well as school level” (NEP 2009). “Majority of the SMCs are not clear
about their roles and responsibilities. Participation of SMCs in school management has been
declined because of discouragement, lack of flexibility in utilization of funds, and lack of
training” (Shah, 2003). SMCs/PTAs are functional where non-governmental organizations
provide technical and human resource support to organize the communities and facilitate regular
meetings. “Most cases of success are either owed to a dynamic head teacher or a local
nongovernment organization that provides an interface between community and the school”
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School Management Committees – A Policy Failure in Pakistan Sajjad Ismail (Aug 2, 2020)
(NEP, 2009 as cited by Shah, M.H. et al., 2012). Based on my
2
experience for over 15 years, the
SMC members who are mostly parents and generally illiterate have their own limitations. For
them reading and writing is difficult, and the SMC deliberations require a lot of record keeping
such as minutes of meeting, accounting, understand written instructions and guidelines as printed
by the government and follow the procedures as prescribed. “In Pakistan, the role of SMC
members is found limited as the members do not engage themselves in planning and budgeting
of the school” (Khalique & Arshad, 2010; Aziz et al., 2014, as cited by Adil et al., 2017). Certain
organizations, mainly non-government, tried to train SMC members however, with little success
as it was a classroom style training using a lot of written material which was not of much help to
many of the illiterate members of the committee. “With the advent of school-based management,
citizen committees in low income countries or areas are often expected to oversee the
functioning of schools, health centres, and other community resources. However, studies of their
effectiveness show mixed results. Though members of such committees may be able to repair
buildings, they often cannot monitor the quality of instruction or of medical services.… they also
lack the experience with quality schools to accurately evaluate service delivery. Thus, donors
and governments must understand better the decision-making dilemmas of people with limited
literacy” (Abadzi, 2013). The provincial governments subsequently notified to increase the
number of ex-government servants, who were also residents of the community, to be part of
SMCs to improve the functioning but that idea has an inherent contradiction defying the whole
concept of stakeholders’ involvement in decision making.
The political culture and structural disparities of power within Pakistani society, and particularly
in rural settings where 70% of the population lives, proved to be another big stumbling block
2
The author has worked with several non-government organizations including the UN, managing education programs in Pakistan and other
countries.
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School Management Committees – A Policy Failure in Pakistan Sajjad Ismail (Aug 2, 2020)
towards achieving the desired policy goals. The democratic traditions are very weak and are
overly shadowed by the tribal/clan/biradaris ties. It is a common observation that the non-
performing and uncommitted political leaders will win the election again only by winning over
the support of the tribe/clan/biradri influential. In rural communities, the age old traditional
feudal system founded on the class system based on landownership is very strong. The public
schools in these areas mostly cater to the children of low socio-economic status (SES) families
having very small land holdings or working as labourers on the lands of big landlords. Talking
about rural Sindh for example, one of the provinces in Pakistan, Khan (2005) says “the poor are
the majority in these agrarian communities”. “Sindh has a feudal political economy in rural
areas: 76 percent of families are landless and work as tenants, while less than one percent of rural
Sindhi families own landholdings of 50 acres or more” (Bengali, 2015, cited by Asim & Riaz,
2020). These big landlords not only hold political clout and influence but also have ‘economic
dominance’, using Weber’s (1986) phrase. The ability to exercise power depends on possessing
appropriate resources, such as money, social status, and information (Power and Education
Policy). “These landlords often dominate economic and political life, exercising control over
land, irrigation, credit and service delivery” (Hussain et al., 2013, cited by Asim & Riaz, 2020).
As in many areas, the local influential are also part of the SMC/SC/PTA/VEC, etc., they wield
their influence in the meetings discouraging an environment of open and free discussion. “De
facto not everyone participates equally on school councils. School heads and education officials
often select prominent community members who are deemed influential and active in public life”
(Government of Pakistan, 1998, cited by Khan, 2007). In such an environment, no wonders if the
policy to meaningfully engage local stakeholders in school management fails and the
stakeholders cannot advocate and support the quality enhancement actions at local level. “In
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School Management Committees – A Policy Failure in Pakistan Sajjad Ismail (Aug 2, 2020)
most rural areas, these organizations are controlled by politically influential persons who have
little interest in school improvement” (NEP 2009).
Last, but not the least, school headteachers keep SMC members at a bay by not sharing
information and not involving them whole heartedly. At some places, headteachers handpicked
some favourites to form dummy SMCs that would do as directed. “… giving school grants
generally has not boosted community involvement in school management. The reason is twofold:
First, only a select group of individuals in the community have access to information about the
amount and delivery date of the grant. Second, even if community members are aware of the
grant, they have limited knowledge about how they can engage with the school or school
committee in terms of using the grant” (Asim et al., 2015). In such cases, the SMC members are
used as rubber stamps to ratify the decisions taken by the school administration, and this is
mostly where financial matters are involved. “Preliminary reports indicate that role of SMCs is
negligible and there is noticeable tendency for centralization of decision making at district level
under devolution. In most of the schools the SMCs have no functional role except for some
involvement in school finance…. These reports also indicate that district government is not
involving the communities in school repair and construction and appointing its own contractors
limiting the role community to mere observer” (Shah, 2003).
Conclusion:
As we see that the policy of the local community involvement in school management is a
‘consequential policy’ as the donors pushed the government for it. The government after forming
the policy sans stakeholders’ involvement, in turn, coerced the lower tier officials, teachers and
community members to implement it. According to Clemmer (1991), this is imposing “controls
and requirements”.
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School Management Committees – A Policy Failure in Pakistan Sajjad Ismail (Aug 2, 2020)
While the government accepted policy failures in its reports and documents, it also continued to
try different approaches to involve local communities. “In Pakistan, …. [SMCs] are largely non-
functional. Policy makers are exploring new initiatives to involve local communities in schools
through revitalized school management committees that help boost accountability and
transparency in the education system and make education services more responsive” (An impact
study report supported by the World Bank, 2016).
The concept of involving local community as partners in education development at the local
level in itself is a great idea. Its importance was never realized more than in the post-COVID
Pakistan when local community support has become more crucial to keep the schools running,
and students attending in a protected and safe environment. The policy must be made to work to
foster long term partnerships to chase SDG
3
targets in this constrained environment when
education is under threat, particularly in the low-income countries with extremely less resources.
There is no one-size fits all policy. Similar experiments in the middle- and higher-income
countries, from where the idea is imported, have been successful. “The concept has received
inspiration from higher income countries such as Chile, the Netherlands, Finland, the UK, and
the United States” (Barrera-Osorio, Fasih, Patrinos, and Santiban ˜ez, 2009, cited by Abadzi,
2013). One approach can be to contextualize the whole concept and strategy keeping in view the
local capacities, social and political environment, and the economic realities. The final product
may differ by province, region, and rural-urban distinctions based on their peculiar environment
resulting from the interaction of these factors. This can be achieved by organizing consultative
workshops with stakeholders, partners, and technical experts from different fields to design a
3
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (Vision 2030)
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School Management Committees – A Policy Failure in Pakistan Sajjad Ismail (Aug 2, 2020)
realistic and workable strategy that is not only aligned to the local culture and customs but is also
within the capacity range of the local communities enabling them to participate meaningfully.
This approach requires devolution of authority to the regional and district levels to design their
own strategy and action plan within the larger framework of policy. The federal and provincial
authorities would only watch the results leaving the operational nitty-gritties to the district
authorities to decide in consultation with their local stakeholders. To make the policy work, there
is no short cut bypassing the stakeholders.
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School Management Committees – A Policy Failure in Pakistan Sajjad Ismail (Aug 2, 2020)
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