The study is an attempt to examine the government’s system of monitoring schools. Monitoring forms one of the mechanisms by which performance of the education system is tracked, shortfalls identified and changes initiated in a timely fashion to ensure the core objectives of education. If, as is the case, quality is persistently declining, one of the questions that arise is: Are schools being monitored effectively? If they are, are they having the desired impact? If not, where do the shortfalls lie? Unfortunately, even as the criticality of monitoring for efficient service delivery is being widely acknowledged, there is very little information on how the system works, whether it feeds back into the planning and policy loop, and what are its constraints.
Placing the the findings within a framework of institutional analysis, the study highlights incoherence in the bureaucratic structures of monitoring, lack of ownership of roles assigned to the monitors, lack of an enabling environment and missing or misplaced accountabilities at lower levels of the bureaucracy as factors contributing inadequate state capacity and therefore resulting in ineffectual monitoring.
The talk is organized by, The Public Accountability and Governance in Education [PAGE] project at CPR, and The Forum for Deliberations on Education [The Forum]. It is the eighth in the series by The Forum.
