A growing number of countries arereforming how schools are managed and are working to involveparents and com¬munities more directly into the schoolmanagement process. The idea behind school-based man¬agementreform is that devolving responsibility to schools and tothose who use the schools will improve ac¬countability,transparency and ensure that resources are allocatedproperly. In this way, the quality of education will improveand so will learning. However, evidence on theeffective¬ness of school-based management remains mixed andparental involve¬ment is often weak. Evaluating differentapproaches for strengthening account¬ability andtransparency in education is critical to making schoolssuccessful to improve learning. In Indonesia, the World Bankworked with the government to set up and evaluatealter¬native ways to improve parents’ knowledge of andinvolvement in the management of money that the governmentgives to schools for operational costs. The evaluation foundthat direct approaches, like inviting parents to a meetingor sending text messages, led to improvement in parentalknowledge and ac¬tions, while sending home brochures andletters didn’t lead to any changes. As countries, includingIndonesia, continue to rely on school-based management toimprove accountability and learning, the evaluation showsthat getting parents and communities involved, and makingsure they are informed, may require more intensive efforts.
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