Community participation and the politics of schooling: School Based Management Committees in Nigeria Helen Poulsen Institute of Education, University College London (UCL) Submitted for the Master of Philosophy (MPhil) degree, 2018 I hereby declare that, except where explicit attribution is made, the work presented in this thesis is entirely my own. Word count (exclusive of appendices and bibliography): 76,724 words 1 Acknowledgements I want to thank the following people: Fatima Aboki, Grace Akuto, Mohammed Bawa, Debbie Caldwell, Scott Caldwell, Sol Correa, Jane Oladimeji Hughes, Mike Musa, Felicia Onibon, Jenny Parkes, Sharanjeet Parmar, Ann Poulsen, Pernille Poulsen, Chris Pycroft, Nick Santcross, Elaine Unterhalter, Albert Webb, Ed Webb, Jocelyn Webb and Maggie Webb. Without your help and support this thesis would never have been written. Thanks also to Cambridge Education, DFID Nigeria and ESSPIN for permission to use the data. 2 Abstract A policy to establish School Based Management Committees (SBMCs) was adopted in Nigeria in 2005. Globally, an approach to educational reform in developing countries with a focus on community management of schools has been promoted by donors since 2000. There is, however, ambiguous evidence of impact on development goals. This thesis asks why community participation continues to be extensively promoted, despite the limited evidence of impact. The thesis examines SBMC policy and its enactment in Nigeria through case studies of ten schools in Kwara, Lagos, Kaduna, Kano and Jigawa states. Data was gathered initially from research through the DFID-funded ESSPIN project in 2009. This research explored how SBMCs were understood, and how they were implemented, from a range of perspectives. This research data was supplemented by additional interviews, documents and analysis. A critical approach to the concept of community is central to this thesis. Community carries strong normative values, often rooted in idealised notions of the past. The thesis focuses on the politics of communities and community participation, and the fact that development policy and practice tends to ignore the politics and to focus on community-based institutions as a technical fix, thereby ignoring the power dynamics and processes of exclusion within a community or community-based institution. Findings from data analysis show that since 2005, SBMC policy has been interpreted and enacted unevenly. This is partly explained by a crisis in education in Nigeria where growing enrolment has not been matched by increased resources and better teaching. A further explanation is that policy actors at federal, state and local government levels are active in interpreting, promoting or resisting the policy, depending on their own particular positions, motivations and incentives. For women and other marginalised groups, SBMCs serve largely to reinforce existing power relations, rather than challenging or changing them. 3 Contents List of tables .................................................................................................................................................... 7 Acronyms and Abbreviations .......................................................................................................................... 8 Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 10 Structure of the thesis ........................................................................................................................... 13 Chapter 2: Locating SBMCs: the Nigeria context............................................................................................ 14 The socio-economic and educational context ....................................................................................... 14 Historical context................................................................................................................................... 16 Aid relationships .................................................................................................................................... 18 Education in Nigeria .............................................................................................................................. 21 SBMC policy ........................................................................................................................................... 24 SBMC implementation – government and NGO initiatives ................................................................... 27 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 32 Chapter 3: The ambivalent nature of community participation in education ................................................ 34 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 34 Community participation in education in practice ................................................................................ 35 Community: concept and critique ......................................................................................................... 42 Participatory development and the empowered community ............................................................... 45 Decentralisation .................................................................................................................................... 52 Participatory development and the production of community ............................................................ 54 Conclusions: identifying gaps, raising questions ................................................................................... 60 Chapter 4: Contested methodologies: researching community participation in education............................ 62 The situated researcher......................................................................................................................... 65 Research strategies ............................................................................................................................... 68 Research tools ....................................................................................................................................... 70 Collecting data ....................................................................................................................................... 76 Ethical considerations ........................................................................................................................... 77 The challenge of analysis ....................................................................................................................... 80 Validity ................................................................................................................................................... 83 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................................ 83 Chapter 5: The politics of SBMCs and the federal state ................................................................................ 85 The history and politics of the federal state .......................................................................................... 85 4 Federal level – ambiguous SBMCs ......................................................................................................... 89 The Federal view ................................................................................................................................... 92 State level .............................................................................................................................................. 93 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................................ 99 Chapter 6: States, schools and the enactment of SBMC policy ................................................................... 102 Nigerian states: diversity and inequality ............................................................................................. 103 Kaduna ................................................................................................................................................. 104 Kano ..................................................................................................................................................... 108 Jigawa .................................................................................................................................................. 111 Kwara ................................................................................................................................................... 118 Lagos .................................................................................................................................................... 123 Chapter 7: SBMC implementation: constructing engagement, shaping the space ....................................... 127 Situating local government ................................................................................................................. 127 Local government representatives construct their engagement with SBMCs .................................... 128 SBMC as a constructed ‘space’ for participation ................................................................................