The Power of Persistence: Education System ... - EQUIP123.net

Though President Mwanawasa made the fight
against corruption a centerpiece of his presidency,
the legacy of corruption from the regimes of
Kenneth Kaunda and Frederick Chiluba (later
found by Britain’s High Court to have conspired
to rob Zambia of about $46 million) heightened
already conservative bureaucratic impulses guiding
reform implementation. The decentralization of
payroll from MOE HQ to the provinces and the
implementation of the school grant system required
the Ministry bureaucracy to take significant risks
that could expose it to charges of corruption
and misuse of funding. During BESSIP, pressure
from donor organizations and the GRZ to spend
resources helped initiate the grant making process.
Civil society and community engagement have
successfully supported implicit decentralization
through the community schools movement. This
grassroots application of political will outside of
MOE channels is consistent with Zambia’s history
of community support to schools, a response to
providing education to the growing number of
OVCs, and evidence of wide frustration regarding
the MOE’s limited provision of access to quality
learning environments located close to communities.
Under BESSIP we realized
there are schools which
cannot entirely be ignored.
But it was a high risk. We
didn’t know if the school
would be surviving in the next
term, didn’t know whether
the grant would be used for
the intended purpose. …Even
when we started education
boards and sent grants to
them, we had stories where
head teachers who bought
bicycles [who] did not fully
use the money for the
intended purpose. [Why did
we take the risk] for the
simple fact it’s better to move
one step and correct yourself
if there are errors. I am happy
that the Ministry took that
bold decision. Otherwise we
wouldn’t be where we are
now in terms of financial
transparency and financial
accountability.
—Senior Zambian Ministry of
Education Official
Interaction across Dimensions
In some ways, the SWAp mechanism and the promotion of decentralization to
community schools had competing implementation strategies, which served
to confuse the nature of MOE support for local participation. Decentralization
and creation and support of community schools sought to create local venues
encouraging local participation. The development of the SWAp however
consumed significant time, energy, and resources at the central level. Samoff
notes, “In practice, SWAps become an obstacle to decentralization, accountability
and local participation.” Some criticisms of FBE include that, while FBE support
participation of the poorest students, it can lower full participation of parents
and communities at the school level. Despite some of these challenges, changes
in institutional framework, engagement of civil society, support of community
schools, and establishment of DEBs will be difficult to reverse. These changes
have supported the increased inclusion of school and district stakeholders in
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