Will School Level Decision Making Improve Access to Better Education in Sri Lanka?

1. Will School Level Decision Making Improve Access to Better Education in Sri Lanka? Nisha Arunatilake Institute of Policy Studies

2. Background - Achievements in Sri Lanka’s Education Sector • Formal education accessible both geographically and financially • Extensive network of schools • Education provided free of charge up to undergraduate level • Good education outcomes • Literacy rate: 91.8 • Grade one enrolment rate: over 95 per cent • Statistics comparable between males and females

3. Background - Issues for the education sector in the country • Inequality in education outcomes • Across geographic and socio-economic sections of the population • Problems with quality and relevance of the education • Inequality in education has led to national problems • Unemployment, youth unrest, violence, long-term poverty

5. Availability of resources in govt. Schools

6. Education outcomes of students • Mastery in first language skills: • Urban 51% • Rural 34% • Mastery in innumeracy skills • Urban 52% • Rural 35% • Source: Estimates by National Education Research and Evaluation Centre

7. Motivation • “New Education Reforms” implemented since 1998 • Objectives: improve access to better quality education for all • Some reforms aim to improve quality of education through decentralizing decision making to the school level. • Education Quality Inputs scheme (EQI) • School based management scheme (SBM) ( now called progamme for school improvements (PSI))

8. Education Quality Inputs Scheme • Objective: Improve availability of resources at the school level • Method: Schools were authorized to make decisions regarding identification and procurement of educational quality inputs (since 2000) • Funding: funds were allocated to schools based on a NBUCRAM Formula • Observed outcomes: • Some improvements in availability of educational inputs. • Utilization of funds not satisfactory due to • Problems in identification of needs (teacher shortages, limited market access) • Procedural problems, procurement problems, • Outcomes less favourable to underprivileged schools

9. School Based Management Scheme • Objective: To involve parents, teachers, past pupils and well wishers in the running of schools • Method: Establish school development boards to: • Plan school development; facilitate effective use of funds; improve education outcomes; ensure effective teacher training • Issues: • Management capacity vary across schools • Careful planning in implementation of the scheme needed

10. Specific Objectives of the proposed Study … • Examine the equity and efficiency in financial resource allocation in the country across different population groups • Examine how capabilities at the school level affect fund utilization under EQI scheme

11. Specific Objectives of the proposed Study • Examine the importance of school quality on education outcomes • Give recommendations for improving EQI and the proposed SBM schemes for improving school quality (using decentralized decision making)

12. Scientific contribution of the study • Studies that examine the availability and equity of educational resources at the school level are extremely limited in Sri Lanka. • Studies that do examine availability of resources across schools have limited their analysis to specific locations. They have not examined differences in resource availability across socio-geographic zones (Rannan-Eliya, 1999) • Other studies limit their methodological approach to qualitative analysis of information, and anecdotal evidence (Arunatilake, 2004; Perera, 1999)

13. Methodology • Examine the equity and efficiency in financial resource allocation in the country across different population groups • Use benefit incidence analysis (BIA) to assess who benefits from public expenditure on education in Sri Lanka • Benefit incidence by different income groups to analyze the progressiveness of public expenditure • Use of Lorenz curves and Concentration curves for visual representation and analysis of inequality • The analysis will be done at different levels of education (i.e., primary, secondary, tertiary) to examine the equity in public expenditure on education by different levels of education • BIA will also be used to examine the distribution of a subsidy across regions and other population groups

14. Methodology contd. • Sensitivity analysis (Demery, 2003) • Sensitivity of BIA to the demographic characteristics of different income groups (e.g., if poorer households have a larger share of school aged children, they are more likely to gain a larger share of the education subsidy, as their need for education is greater) • Benefits from public education can be greater for those households who are able to complement these services by out-of-pocket spending. Examine other types of inequalities in the system that are not revealed by benefit incidence of a public subsidy

15. Methodology contd. • Data • Use Household level data (SLIS) to construct income groups and out-of-pocket expenditure on education • MOE data to obtain expenditure on education assigned to different levels of schooling for each province • School census data to examine per student expenditure on teaching across districts

16. Methodology – contd. • An analysis of capability of schools to manage their development • Use an ordered probit model to examine factors affecting utilization of EQI funds. • Dependent variable : Categorized percent utilization levels of funds • Explanatory variables: School level characteristics (e.g., teacher quality, teacher availability, availability of other physical school resources), community level characteristics (e.g., access to roads and markets), other socio-economic variables • Data: • Utilization levels of funds allocated under the EQI scheme – obtained from zonal education offices; • Household and community characteristics from SLIS data, • School characteristics using school census data

17. Methodology - contd. • Analysis of school quality on educational outcomes • Theory on education production functions states that (Hanushek, Rivikin, Taylor, 1996): • Education attainment = f(family characteristics, community environment, past achievement of students, school characteristics) estimated at school level. Data: National level examination results - Examination Department; School characteristics – School census data, Community and aggregated household level data – household surveys

18. Methodology – contd. • Evaluation of EQI and SBM schemes in improving equity in school quality • Based on the findings of the above three studies EQI and SBM schemes will be analyzed to identify areas needing improvements in the implementation of these schemes taking into account the contexts (e.g., differences in capacity of school and communities) in which these schemes are taking place.

19. Policy Relevance • The proposed study examines • the efficiency and equity in education financial resource allocation across the country • the issues concerning decentralization of education related decision making to school level • It hopes to provide policy recommendations that will improve implementation of proposed EQI and SBM

20. Thank You