Enabling Environment for Social Accountability in ... - SASANet

On the other hand, the initial legal code vested inordinate power in the school boards, which exercised
more power than community school bodies in other countries. Various stakeholders indicated problems
that were created by the boards’ exercise of their full powers. For example, stakeholders said that boards
would replace principals according to their political affiliation when a new government took office.
According to the director of the Mongolian Association for Primary and Secondary School Development
(MAPSSD), the changes in 2002 were a result of “founders” politically appointed to the councils
asserting their right to hire and dismiss principals. The principal of the Ulaanbaatar school confirmed this
practice, noting that 10 principals in one UB district alone were fired in rapid succession in 1997–98, only
to be reinstated by the courts. 82 Such practices were obviously disruptive and destabilizing, but could
possibly have been remedied by curtailing political appointments to the council rather than
disempowering them.
Although the new councils serve only in an advisory capacity, they still play a role in school governance.
They make proposals on policy and development, review budget documents, supervise principals, and
recommend their hiring or dismissal. Although their powers are markedly reduced, the councils can
nonetheless continue to play a role in promoting civic engagement and social accountability.
Nevertheless, the significant reduction in the power of the councils has reinforced the popular perception
that they are not relevant. This perception is problematic and needs to be addressed because to be
effective, bodies such as the school councils must have the support and trust of the community (Finding
EDU 2).
NEED TO CHANGE POPULAR PERCEPTIONS OF
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT IN MONGOLIAN SCHOOLS
Community involvement in the education sector has been limited even when the boards held extensive
formal powers. According to a representative of the NGO, Mongolian Education Alliance (MEA), the
general citizenry lacks the sense of public schools being “public.” Parents feel that they “just need to send
their kids to school and worry about their getting good grades; that is enough.” She noted that parents
rarely attend meetings where their representatives to the school council are elected, because these
meetings are “boring” and teachers publicly denounce poorly performing students at these meetings.
Moreover, parents believe that principals and those above them have “all the authority” and set the rules
of school governance.
These attitudes may well be linked to Mongolia’s socialist legacy in which schools had top-down
structures of authority, which characterized them as state rather than public institutions. Such authority
structures are difficult to reform through legal processes; they require outreach programs that encourage
community involvement in the education sector. The need for civic education at the local level was
stressed not only by NGOs working in this sector but also by public officials such as the chair of
Uyanga’s soum-level Khural, who observed that parents are oblivious to the importance of their
participation in school councils.
The MEA is collaborating with the Open Society Forum to improve parent and community involvement
in schools by setting up a grant competition to which school and local government officials can apply.
The MEA/OSF project has sent out questionnaires to 80 schools in all aimags and the Ger district of
82 Although there was insufficient time to ascertain the grounds for either the dismissals or the court rulings, the principals’
terminations occurred shortly after the election of a new ruling party in 1996.