Institutional Arrangements and Education Service Delivery in Primary Schools in Mali

Over the past decade, Mali has been engaged in a process of improving access and quality of education within the framework of the education for all of the Millennium Development Goals. An important aspect of that process is the participative schools' management of local authorities through teachers-parents-students associations. This paper analyzes the role and effectiveness of such institutional arrangement that involve the local community in the governance of primary schools in Mali, using the accountability framework and data from the quantitative service delivery survey implemented in 2005. We find that although information is likely to be available across the entire chain of education service delivery, the capability to sanction or to reward the public primary schools teachers is at the central level. The capability of the local government in terms of enforceability is weakened in private and Medersa schools while it is somewhat strengthened in community schools. A simple OLS regression shows no strong relation between school-based management - through the local community - and primary schools' performance. The results also suggest that class size, teaching staff and teachers incentives are important to schools' performance.