USAID / Benin - Success Stories

Education: How Money Causes Problems … and Opportunities: An Example from Benin

Often the path to improving the education system is not exactly a straight line.
Such has been the experience in Benin where the government, in the framework of the Poverty Reduction Strategy, announced an annual subsidy of about $3 per student for all of the country's nearly one million primary school students.

This sounds, of course, like a good thing. The money is provided to the schools and is meant to lighten the burden on parents who normally pay school fees amounting to about $2 per month. It helps schools to pay teachers and meet other needs such as books and furniture that always are in short supply.

The immediate result was a rush by parents to enroll children in schools, as in many cases; school directors abolished school fees in response to this act of social largesse. Overall, in fact, more than 140,000 additional children were enrolled in school last school year than in the year before.

But, as can happen, a positive measure turned out to have unforeseen consequences, at least in the beginning. One of these was that parents in some cases stopped contributing to help meet school costs on the grounds that the government was now providing a subsidy. Where this happened it meant schools ended up with less, rather than more, total funding. Another consequence was that some School Directors excluded parents' committees from participation in deciding how these funds were used, on the grounds that it was not their concern. This did nothing to improve overall management of the schools, or to ensure efficient use of the funds.

Though it is hard to say how widespread these problems were, they were real enough to prompt the USAID-funded PVO World Education to take action. It should be noted that World Education provides technical assistance to parents' associations so that they can play a more active role in the education system. Here, was a golden opportunity to push the fledgling parents' associations into the political arena. In response to this experience of mixed results, in September 2001 World Education organized a national meeting of parents' school committees to discuss their experiences related to the subsidy and to propose to the Ministry of Education measures to address these problems.

Following this meeting, the conclusions and recommendations were presented by the national association of parents' associations (FENAPEB) to the Minister of Education. In fact, this was the first political action taken by FENAPEB, whose members are being trained by World Education with a grant from USAID. Soon afterwards, the Minister of Education issued a policy decree largely based on the FENAPEB recommendations and clarifying the role of the parents' associations in managing the subsidy funds. Since the start of the 2001-2002 school year this new policy has been applied throughout Benin. Initial indications are that it has helped to settle the situation by providing guidelines on the role of the parents' associations in determining the use of the subsidy.

It has also, it should be noted, given FENAPEB a seat at the table in policy dialogue with the Ministry. Since their initial success, FENAPEB now participates regularly in such discussions, which is an important step forward in building a partnership between government and civil society to manage the educational system in Benin.

USAID/ Benin- Success Stories