Institutions, service delivery and social exclusion : a case study of the education sector in Buenos Aires

47 LCSHD Paper Series Department of Human Development 20965 Institutions, Service Delivery and Social Exclusion: A Case Study of the Education Sector in Buenos Aires Ariel Fiszbein January 2000 The World Bank Latin America and Caribbean Regional Office   Human Development Department LCSHD Paper Series No. 47 Institutions, Service Delivery and Social Exclusion: A Case Study of the Education Sector in Buenos Aires Ariel Fiszbein January 2000 Papers prepared in this series are not formal publications of the World Bank They present preliminary and unpolished results of country analysis or research that is circulated to encourage discussion and comment; any citation and use of this paper should take account of its,provisional character. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely -those of the aithors and should not be attributed in any manner to the World Bank, its affiliated organization members of its Board of Executive Directors or the countries they represent. The World Bank Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Office  This paper was written based on research conducted during the summer of 1999 while a Visiting Researcher at Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo Institucional (CEDI). Support from the Fundaci6n Gobierno y Sociedad and the PREM Professional Development Program at the World Bank is acknowledged.  I. Introduction Access to quality services varies substantially among different groups in society. Thus, very often "the poor"' lack access to certain services (or have access to services of lower quality) and as a result their capabilities to benefit from the opportunities available to others in society are diminished. In that sense, education is a particularly important service because of its strong impact on earning capacities as well as how it enables individuals to participate and control their social and political environment. Institutional factors are extremely important in determining who gets what type of service: the processes by which decisions are made on the allocation of resources, the incentives faced by the providers of the services to serve specific groups with different intensity, the incentives faced by different groups of users to demand specific services. Institutions (both the formal and informal arrangements that determine how individuals and organizations behave) can be "inclusive" -in the sense that they promote the participation of the weak-or, alternatively, "exclusionary". An important characteristic of education services is that the public sector is typically its primary provider. Thus, the analysis of institutional arrangements requires one to focus on issues of governance and public sector performance. The paper is motivated by one basic question: how institutional arrangements are operating to exclude (or include) certain groups ("the poor") from quality education. Lack of access to schools is an extreme form of exclusion. But access to poor quality schooling is also a form of exclusion --and one that is more characteristic of urban areas such as the ones considered in this paper which will, correspondingly, take this broader definition of exclusion. ' The terms "poverty" and "poor" can have different meanings to different people: insufficient income, relative depravation not only in the income space but also in access to public goods, exclusion from social and political rights, etc. In this paper, I am abstracting from those distinctions and use the terms "poor" and "poverty" more as a metaphor (e.g. the disadvantaged) than a well-defined "target" group in society. This license is not, I believe, a serious limitation in a case study such as this. But it is one that should be addressed in a more systematic analysis of the hypotheses I will be discussing in the paper.  This is a case study: it focuses on one metropolis, in one country and analyzes how those institutional mechanisms are operating in practice. In that sense, it has more of a demonstration goal than the pretension of being representative of national or international trends. The paper focuses both on questions dealing with the distribution and use of resources within the education system. Perhaps the most obvious way in which certain groups in society experience limited opportunities to receive a good education is associated with the way in which resources are allocated to different schools. Thus we would like to know whether schools in poor districts or neighborhoods receive less (or worse) inputs. But, more importantly, we would like to understand the means by which that may happen: how are institutions operating to allocate less (worse) resources to poor schools.2 As important as how many (and what type) of inputs are available is how those inputs are utilized. The implied question is whether schools that cater mostly to poor students are less effective in using the resources they get to produce good results. This leads us into the question of how schools are managed. Are "poor schools" are run differently than non-poor ones? If so, what are the incentives leading to these different behaviors? Given the federal nature of the govemance structure of education in Argentina this analysis requires consideration of behaviors/decisions by more than one level of government. In fact, there are many agents involved in the management of schools. Their actions and patterns of behavior are likely to have important effect on the inclusion of students with disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds.3 This opens up a complex series of hypotheses that need to be tested. For example, do administrators and supervisors in the education system manage differently their relationship with poor and non-poor schools? Or is the dynamics of power relations (e.g. directors/teachers vs. 2 The same definitional ambiguities I recognized in terms of the use of the termn "poor" apply when referring to "poor schools". (see footnote 1). Essentially, I am referring to schools with high concentration of poor students. 3Many of the outcomes we observe are related to patterns of behavior and decisions by users (i.e. poor families) and not the design of institutions in the education sectors. Our approach, however, is to take those factors as given and consider to what extent the institutional arrangements in the schooling system take into account those "demand-side factors" and design compensatory measures or interventions to alter behavior.  parents/students) different depending on the socioeconomic background of students attending the school? Do the poor in non-poor schools experience differential treatment? Do authorities and teachers in non-poor schools face incentives to foster inclusion of poor children? We also know that there is substantial heterogeneity among schools within (relatively) homogenous districts: some schools are better able than others to mobilize resources, and more effective at using those resources. We would ideally like to understand better the factors that explain that capacity to mobilize and manage resources. The paper will provide some initial, exploratory, responses to several of these questions. The field work for the paper took place during the months of July and August of 1999 and it involved some two dozen semi-structured interviews4 with authorities in the education systems in Provincia de Buenos Aires (the Province) and Ciudad de Buenos Aires (the City), experts, union leaders and other key informants, and visits to schools in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area.5 Section II presents a brief description of how the education system operates in the Province and in the City. Section III presents the main arguments on how the rules of the game in the education system tend to include/exclude certain groups. Section IV concludes. H. The System Today Argentina is not a poor country (its GDP per capita is US$8,200) and its main education indicators indicate so: complete coverage of primary education, a gross I would like to thank the following people for sharing their experiences and views during our interviews: Dardo Becena, Delia Bisutti, Cecilia Braslavsky, Hugo Carranza, Roberto D'Amico, Graciela Di Marco, Maria del Carmen Feijoo, Fanny Alicia Greiding de Knopoff, Eduardo Macaluse, Federico Mejer Alejandro Morduchowitz Daniel Prades, Silvia Ruiz, Patricia Sarle, Jorgelina Seminario, Graciela Strassio, Juan Carlos Tedesco, Guillermina Tiramonti, Father Juan Torrella, Gerardo Tozzi, and Maria Lucrecia Tulic. I hope I have succeeded in interpreting their very diverse perspectives in a consistent fashion. I benefited from many discussions with my colleagues Mariano Narodowski at CEDI and Sandra Cesilini at the World Bank who also helped me organizing my field work. Claudia Kulish provided extremely valuable research assistance. Comments from Mariano Narodowski are gratefully acknowledged. 5Escuela No.25 Martin Guemes, Isla Talavera, Campana; Escuela Media No. I Joaquin V. Gonzalez, Don Bosco, Quilmes; Escuela No. 43 Ricardo Rojas, Don Bosco, Quilmes; ; Escuela No. 29, San Fermando; in Provincia de Buenos Aires; and Escuela No. 2 Maximo S. Victoria, Distrito 11; Escuela No. 4 Distrito 21, and Escuela No. 10 Distrito 19, in City of Buenos Aires.  enrollment rate at the secondary level that approaches 80%, an average of 8.7 years of schooling among adults. But, as in most countries in Latin America, income distribution is highly unequal. As a result, Argentina presents relatively high levels of poverty: the latest, unofficial,6 estimates indicate the incidence of poverty (defined as income of less than $495 per month for a typical family) in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area to be 27%. Its education performance (coverage and quality) is below that of countries of similar levels of income (World Bank, 1999). There are important equity concems with respect to the operation of the education system. School attendance, particularly at the secondary level, is lower among children from poor households (Morduchowitz, 1998). Provincial level data (Aguerrondo, 1993; World Bank, 1999) shows that children from poor households also experience higher rates of repetition and late entry (which combined result in significant over-age among those attending school) and worse results in tests (see below). Furthermore, from a dynamic point of view, the education system is not effective in compensating the large income and social gaps that exist and, thus, it does not contribute to a narrowing down of such gaps over time. In other words, the education system is not acting as an "equalizer". Responsibility for primary and secondary education has been decentralized to the provincial level. After 1976, a military government completed the forced transfer of primary education to the provinces and the City of Buenos Aires. In the early 1990s a new process of decentralization (this time under a democratic regime) transferred responsibilities for secondary education. A new federal education law was approved in 1993 that regulates the distribution of responsibilities between the nation and the provinces that now play the leading role in financial, pedagogical and administrative matters. A key element of the 1993 law was the introduction of a three level system consisting of one year of compulsory initial education, a nine-year compulsory basic general education, known as Educaci6n General Bdsica or EGB, and a three-year 6Estimates based on Encuesta Permanente de Hogares, May 1999 (La Naci6n, August 20, 1999).  optional7 middle level, the polimodal, with a variety of orientations. Provinces have until the year 2000 to implement these reforms, a matter of substantial controversy. The Buenos Aires metropolitan area, the object of this case study, falls under two different jurisdictions. The City of Buenos Aires (which since 1996 has an autonomous government and thus secured a status that, for all practical purposes, is not different to that of a province) has a population of 3,000,000 and an education system consisting of approximately 700,000 students (57 % in the public system). The Buenos Aires province, with a population of almost 13,000,000 is the most populated in the country (it concentrates close to 40% of the national population). Its education system consists of approximately 3,700,000 students (70% in the public system). The Gran Buenos Aires covers 19 parlidos (counties) that forn a belt around the City and that, in many ways, constitute an integral part of the city. About two thirds of the student population in the province concentrates in Gran Buenos Aires. The management structure in the two jurisdictions shares some common elements but also some important differences that are worth mentioning as they have potentially strong implications for the way services are delivered. In the Province, a Directorate of Education (Direcci6n General de Cultura y Educaci6n or DGCE) with ministerial status has the overall responsibility for the education system.9 The administrative and pedagogical control is deconcentrated to the level of 134 districts (that coincide with electoral districts) of widely different size. Sixteen Regional Chiefs (Jefes Regionales) for each branch of the system, appointed by the DGCE and reporting to the under-secretary for education, oversee the operation of District Inspectors (Inspectores Distritales), selected on a competitive basis, and Inspection Secretariats (Secretarias de Jnspecci6n), also at the district level. These are responsible for the bulk of the administrative work. Quite often, though, Inspectors have 7The Province is making the polimodal obligatory. 8 The City of Buenos Aires has, so far, resisted the implementation of this reform. 9 The Director General is also the president of a General Education Council (Consejo General de Cultura y Educaci6n) with advisory functions. The provincial executive branch nominates ten members (four of which are proposed by teachers) for a period of one year -with possible re-electioh-and the provincial legislature approves the nominees.  simply too many schools under their responsibility and, thus, very limited capacity to become substantially involved in pedagogic matters.10 A somewhat different structure exists in the City of Buenos Aires that is divided into 21 districts for primary education and 8 regions for secondary education (neither of which coincide with the electoral districts in the City). Once again, most administrative and pedagogical functions are in the hands of distnict supervisors (the equivalent of the inspectors in the Province) that report to a Directorate corresponding to their branch (e.g. primary, secondary, adult, etc.) within the City's Education Secretariat (with Ministerial ranking). The separation of administrative and pedagogical functions by branch is very strong in both jurisdictions. Each branch has developed its own "culture" and "identity". The clashes between the primary and secondary branches became quite transparent in the Province with the implementation of the reform that required an unusual level of interaction between the former "primary" and "secondary" branches. Furthermore, within school units, the fact that staff belong to different branches (e.g. school counselors to the "psychology" branch, physical education teachers to their own branch, etc.) constitutes an important bamer to the effective integration of the teaching community under the leadership of school directors. One important difference between the two jurisdictions is the existence of elected School Boards (Consejos Escolares) at the district level in the Province." School Boards do not have an established managerial role and play mostly routine administrative functions.12 Typically they become intermediaries vis-a-vis the municipal (and sometimes the provincial) authorities mostly to mobilize resources for schools in their districts. They do not have budgets of their own although they receive funds from the '