Pre and post assessment of school management committee: A case study of Sindh

Authors

Lubna Naz, Applied Economics Research Centre, University of KarachiFollow
Abdul Aleem Qureshi, Applied Economics Research Centre, University of KarachiFollow
Fauzia Sohail, Applied Economics Research Centre, University of KarachiFollow

Abstract

In Pakistan, the focus and concern of the educational planners and managers increasing interest in improving the school efficiency has shifted the attention from overall education system, particularly towards the functions of the schools. This study is an attempt to evaluate the causal impact of school-based management reform program namely school management committee (SMC) with a focus on Sindh province of Pakistan. Here, the study assesses the pre-post effect of SMC on various indicators of access and quality of education such as student-flow rates, school environment and teacher quality. Furthermore, for robustness analysis, the study assesses the regression model of DID method to estimate the impact of SMC on outcomes of interest. Finally, the study checks the balance of covariates used in the models at baseline. In order to conduct a pre-post analysis of SMC on quality measures of educational attainment, the study uses a sophisticated quasi-experimental technique known as standard difference-in-differences (DID). The findings of the standard DID model reveals that in Sindh, SMC has significantly improved the quality of schools by providing a better and developed environment of the school. However, the negative impact of SMC on other two outcome measures of quality of education implies inefficiencies in the utilization of SMC funds. These funds usually spend on repairs and maintenance of school instead of focusing on enhancing the quality of education such as improvement in student-survival rate and decline in dropout rate. Moreover, the findings of the robustness check based on regression analysis of DID method find similar estimates of SMC on all the outcome variables. Finally, the balance check of baseline covariates used in the analysis show that covariates are balanced and their differences are different from zero for each outcome of interest. This study proposes the policy implications to make the procedure of SMC functional and effective, this includes improved student access to school, quality of teachers, monitoring, management, curriculum and financing of the program.

Keywords

School-Based Management, School Management Committee, Difference-in-Difference, Impact Evaluation, Quality of Education, Education Policy

DOI

https://doi.org/10.54784/1990-6587.1497

Journal of Economic Literature Subject Codes

I2, I21, I24, I280, I200, P36

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Naz, L., Qureshi, A. A., & Sohail, F. (2023). Pre and post assessment of school management committee: A case study of Sindh. Business Review, 18(1), 48-70. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.54784/1990-6587.1497