Improving Accountability, Improving Services in School

In Bangladesh, School Management Committees (SMC) and teachers define accountability as informing parents about exam results of their children or reporting to the education office on school performance. SMCs and teachers do not hold themselves accountable to students for delivery of quality education in a favourable learning environment. There is in fact no formal or semi-formal opportunities for students to interact with school authorities, and this is both disempowering, and an important barrier for improvement of service delivery to students.

Water, sanitation and hygiene in schools (WASH) is a key driver of attendance and quality learning. Girls in particular are likely to drop out of school, reduce attendance and as a result suffer academically if there are no clean facilities available. Much has been written of the benefit of strengthened WASH facilities, and it is an indicator of service provision that can easily be tracked and evaluated. Save the Children in partnership with the National Children’s Task Force (NCTF) decided that centering a social accountability project around WASH would be a good opportunity to answer a number of questions: Can social accountability in schools improve service delivery? Can it empower young people? Can the use of technology as a tool for social accountability enhance results? Read this project brief to find out more.

Supporting programme materials and videos are linked in the ‘Related documents’ section.