Social Factors Determining “Community Participation”

—The Tradition of Community School and School Management Committees in Oromia Region, Ethiopia

Abstract

School-based management has been promoted in many developing countries as an effective means to decentralize educational administration and give decision-making authority to the school. In Ethiopia, too, the School Management Committees (SMCs) are formulated in all schools as a multiparty administrative body, with participation of community representatives, school principal, teachers, and local government officers. Regardless of this institutionalized channel of participation, there are schools which have and do not have active community participation. Based on the assumption that the factors determining the levels and the styles of participation exist not only within the SMC and the school itself but also in the societies surrounding the school, the author enlarged the scope of investigation to the traditional social structure and socio-cultural dynamics. The research was conducted at 3 district education offices and 14 primary schools in Oromia Region, Ethiopia, through interviews, questionnaire, focus-group discussion, and participatory workshop. By untangling the perspectives of different actors—especially community members—at different localities, the author demonstrates factors which determine the types and levels of popular commitment to education.

The research revealed that the schools which have active SMC tend to be those in which parents and local people have been actively involved in school matters even before the introduction of SMC. Also, often times, SMCs are supported by non-institutionalized mechanism of participation, such as traditional communal unit called Goti which actually mobilize people and resources. Further, active communities have strong leaders who have either traditional authority like Goti leaders, administrative authority like village administrators or school principal, or connection with outside society and modern knowledge based on higher level of education or better cash income than other people. The paper also demonstrated the ambiguity of the term “community” given the fact that the school catchment areas often transcend the administrative or traditional unit of community and the people's level of involvement varies depending on who has power and how leadership is exercised.