Empowering Parents in Schools

Improving service quality via beneficiary participation in managing the service may be unrealistic if a community with low authority must act in opposition to a high authority service provider. This paper presents a framework of how community characteristics change the effectiveness of different types of participation. It uses data from a randomized pilot project on participation in school management in Niger to test our predictions.

The paper finds that all parents increase participation in ways that support the teachers, but only educated parents increase monitoring of teacher attendance. It also presents evidence that participation can be a nudge to increased service demand.