Empowering Parents in School: What They Can (not) Do

Abstract

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. We present a framework of how community characteristics change the effectiveness of different types of participation. W use date from a ramdomized pilot project on participation in school management in Niger to test our predictions. We find that all parents increase participation in ways that support the teachers, but only educated parents increase monitoring of teacher attendance. We also present evidence that participation can be a "nudge" to increased service demand.