Journal of general studies. (2010) Vol. 5 Number 2pp51-60

STRATEGIES FOR ACCOUNTABILITY DRIVEN POLICYIMPLEMENTATION IN SECONDARY EDUCATION.

BY

EGBOKA, PATIENCE NDIDI (PhD)DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT AND POLICY,

NNAMDI AZIKIWE UNIVERSITY, AWKAANAMBRA STATE, NIGERIA

UZOECHINA, GLADYS O. (PhD) & ONUSELOGU, ADAOBI P.

(PhD)

DIVISION OF GENERAL STUDIES

ANAMBRA STATE UNIVERSITY ULI

ABSTRACTAccountability has been an educational issue foras long as people have had to pay for and governschools. This paper discusses some strategies thatcould be adopted to ensure accountability ineducational policy implementation. It began with adiscussion of the definition and concepts inAccountability-Driven policy implementation. Thestrategies for accountability-driven policyimplementation as discussed include market,professional, decentralization, management,

political and legal approaches. Somerecommendations were made on the need to adoptthese strategies in Anambra State SecondaryEducation System.

Introduction

Educational policy is a highly diverse set of

activities or decisions, which are meant to guide

specified educational programmes or activities.

According to Eya (2002), educational policy is a

course-setting involving decision of the widest

ramifications and longest time perspectives in the life

of an educational organization. Osuji (2002) saw

educational policies are essential guidelines,

legislation or criteria that are essential to ensure

the provision of required educational services and as a

basis for quality control. Marfo (2004) defined

educational policies as the established guidelines,

directives, acts or laws that support the effective

implementation of education programmes. For the

purposes of this paper, educational policy is defined

functionally to mean an explicit or implicit single

decision or group of decisions which may set out

directives for guiding future decisions, initiate

actions, or guide implementation of educational

programmes.

Educational policy implementation is the last step

in any planning cycle and planners must appreciate the

dynamThe National Policy on Education (Federal Republic

of Nigeria, 2004) described secondary education as a

form of education children receive after primary

education and before the tertiary stage. Among the

policy thrusts of secondary education in Nigeria is how

to either provide skills and knowledge enabling young

people to move to tertiary education, or ensure a

smooth transition to work for students whose secondary

education is terminal. The policy document further

espoused policies such as increasing access to

secondary education to citizens irrespective of sex,

social, religious and ethnic background; diversifying

the curriculum to cater for differences in talents and

with due consideration to science and technology;

emphasis on cultural art, language as well as the

world’s cultural heritage. To ensure the quality of

service delivery in the secondary sector, the policy

further stated the need for private proprietorship,

regular monitoring; fight against drug abuse; effective

supervision and administration; professional

development of teachers and principals, and guidance

and counseling services in all schools in Nigeria.

These policies are formulated by the Federal

Ministry of Education, and then communicated to State

Ministries of Education for implementation actions. In

Anambra State secondary education level, a State

Education Commission under the Ministry of Education is

generally in charge of policy dissemination and

implementation management. This commission makes

further policy statements in addition to the Federal

policies and sends to the school principals for

implementation (Onuh, 2008). Thus the Federal and State

Ministries of Education with their established State

Education Commissions, principals and teachers have

roles to play in policy implementation.

Accountability-Driven Policy Implementation:Definitions and Concepts

Accountability-driven policy implementation is the

process of being accountable or responsible for

educational policy outcomes. Policy implementation

refers to the execution of established policies.

Egonnwan (1991) defined it as the process of converting

finance, materials, technical and human inputs into

outputs as required by policy documents. Flanagan

(2001) described policy implementation as the carrying

out of programmes and activities with a view to

achieving desired levels of attainment preferably

expressed in terms of outcomes of instruction. It is

the stage when policy statements are translated into

action to achieve desired objectives (Oriafo, 2006).

Generally, policy implementation is the most crucial

step in the policymaking process because it is not

enough to set out policies. Efforts must be made to

translate the stated policies into practice. This

informed Babalola (1993) to note that no matter how

good a policy is, it is likely to be ineffective if it

is not properly implemented. It cannot be assumed that

once a decision is made, it will be carried out

automatically. Policies must be made to happen through

the adoption of effective strategies.

Accountability-Driven Policy Implementation means

providing relevant resources and timely information on

educational policy implementation process and accepting

responsibilities for educational outcomes (Akpan, 2007).

Heim (2007:1) noted that “Accountability is multi-

faceted: it involves responsibility, authority,

evaluation and control. It is the responsibility that

goes with the authority to do something. The

responsibility is to use authority justifiably and

credibly”. In this paper accountability-driven policy

implementation is described as stewardship of resources

such as funds, materials, information, discipline, time,

teacher quantity and quality, student learning, and

positive working relationship with parents and

communities aimed at stimulating higher levels of

students’ performance.

Strategies for Accountability-Driven Policy

Implementation

The major thrust of any strategy for

accountability is to provide enhanced information about

education for improved planning, policy, practice, and

decision-making. The forms of accountability include

market, decentralized, professional, management, legal,

and political forms.

1. Market strategies

Sometimes referred to as the exit option,

this approach to accountability increases school

competition for students (Linn, 2000). Market

strategies emphasize private sector participation as

well as competitiveness among schools and bodies

handling educational policies. It is an especially

prominent approach currently, versions of it are

evident in several European countries, Canada, the

United States, New Zealand, Australia and parts of

Asia, and presently in the current unity school reforms

in Nigeria, for example. Specific tools for increasing

competition among schools for students include:

• allowing school choice by opening boundaries within

and across school systems

• school privatisation plans

• creation of charter schools, private-public

partnership schools, academies and other specialized

educational facilities

These forms of accountability could be used as

strategies for accountability-driven policy

implementation though activities such as: labelling

schools in terms of academic and morals, giving more

funds to schools with excellent performance as

incentive, identifying poor performing schools and

giving more funds to them, closing schools with poor

performances and by publicly ranking schools based on

aggregated student achievement scores. Another market

strategy could be to mandate communities to provide

resources to schools or face losing the schools,

introducing support taxes to communities and corporate

organizations, and merging schools. These tools are

often used in combination.

The common thread binding together these different

tools for increasing competition is a belief that

public schools are unresponsive, bureaucratic and

monopolistic (Lee, 1993). Such organizations are

assumed, by advocates of this approach, to have little

need to be responsive to pressure from their clients

because they are not likely to lose them. This is the

case with public schools in Anambra State where

principals and teachers do not entertain the fear of

losing their jobs should their schools be closed for

persistent student failure (Ezekwesili, 2007). In

relation to schools, this means that they will come to

view their major task as offering programmes that they

believe are good for their clients. Such organisations,

it is argued, seek efficiency on their own terms and

are prone to view clients as objects to be treated

rather than customers to be served.

Advocates of this approach to educational

accountability (Chubb & Moe, 1990) hold a series of

assumptions about how such competition is likely to

result in greater student achievement. First, increased

competition allows parents and students to select

public schools with which they are more satisfied and

which better meet their educational needs. Second,

parents who are more satisfied with their child’s

school provide greater support to that school and to

their child’s learning. Third, students are likely to

be more engaged when their own learning styles are

matched to a particular school. Fourth, when teachers

have chosen their work settings, and have been active

in designing their own schools’ programmes, they will

be more committed to implementing those programmes

effectively. Finally, all of these outcomes might

combine to increase student achievement, attendance and

educational attainment.

2. Decentralisation strategies

The basic assumption giving rise to this form of

site-based management is that the curriculum of the

school ought to directly reflect the values and

preferences of parents and the local community

(Billing, 2004). School professionals, it is claimed,

are typically not as responsive to such local values

and preferences as they ought to be. Their

responsiveness is greatly increased, however, when the

power to make decisions about curriculum, budget and

personnel is in the hands of the parent/community

constituents of the school. School councils in which

parent/community constituents have a majority of the

membership are the primary vehicle through which to

exercise such power.

Typically, decentralization is pursued through the

implementation of an administrative control form of

site-based management which increases school-site

administrators’ accountability to the central district

or board office for the efficient expenditure of

resources. These efficiencies are to be realised by

giving local school administrators authority over such

key decision areas as budget, physical plant, personnel

and curriculum. It also involves giving parents,

communities and school boards authority to hire and

fire staff, supervise schools, influence curriculum,

and allocate resources to schools. Advocates of this

form of site-based management reason that such

authority, in combination with the incentive to make

the best use of resources, ought to get more of the

resources of the school into the direct service of

students (Wang, Wong & Jeong-Ram, 1999; Billing, 2004;

Leithwood, 2007). To assist in accomplishing that

objective, the principal may consult informally with

teachers, parents, students or community

representatives. Site councils are typically

established to advise the principal, with membership at

the discretion of the principal.

Evidence of the effects on school leaders of

decentralisation or school-based management in its

various forms is quite extensive (Bullock & Thomas,

1997; Anderson, 2007). These data indicate that

assumptions about the role of school leaders in

decentralised settings sometimes describe what actually

happens in practice. For instance, when parent-

dominated school councils are part of decentralisation,

principals often provide leadership in respect to both

internal and external processes associated with

councils. Internally, principals often find themselves

setting the agenda, providing information to other

council members, assisting council decision making, and

developing a close working relationship with the

council chair. Externally, principals often act as

strong, active supporters of their school councils,

communicating with all stakeholders about council

activities, and promoting the value of councils for the

work of school staffs.

3. Professional strategies

Professional strategies are concerned with making

teachers, principals and policy makers, more responsive

to policy implementation efforts through capacity

building, greater decision-making and regular

consultations. This professional approach is more

manifest in site-based management used in Europe and

United States of America (Anderson, 2007), and in the

private school system in Nigeria. The goal of this form

of site-based management is to make better use of

teachers’ knowledge in such key decision areas as

budget, curriculum and occasionally personnel

(Lee,1993). Basic to this form of site-based management

is the assumption that professionals closest to the

student have the most relevant knowledge for making such

decisions, and that full participation in the decision-

making process will increase their commitment to

implementing whatever decisions are made. Participatory

democracy, allowing employees greater decision-making

power, is also presumed to lead to greater efficiency

and effectiveness, and to better outcomes (Clune &

Witte, 1988). Schools associated with this form of SBM

typically have decision-making power and, while many

groups are often represented, teachers have the largest

proportion of members.

A professional strategy to accountability allows

teachers to make curriculum decisions, involve teachers

in the development of curriculum, allows teachers to

write proposals on school improvement, allows teachers

to dictate terms of parental involvement and emphasizes

teacher development initiatives. Parents and community

members participate in school governance based on their

areas of specialization. It also emphasises heavy

control of entry to the profession by government, with

responsibility for subsequent monitoring of

accountability turned over to members of the profession

itself (eg The Teacher’s Registration Council in

Nigeria, colleges of physicians, lawyers’ bar

associations). Such an approach requires clear standards

of professional knowledge, skill and performance.

Professional strategies to accountability assume a role

for school leaders suggested by the label chairperson.

Leaders, it is implied, have an increased need to

stay abreast of best professional practices and to

assist staff in the identification of professional

standards for their work. In the context of professional

strategies to accountability, leaders need to both set

expectations and create conditions for professional

growth. It seems likely, as well, that these leaders

will find it productive to monitor progress of staff

towards the achievement of professional standards,

buffer staff from external distractions, and assist

parents to understand and appreciate such standards. It

has been suggested that school leaders will need to

mobilize resources to meet not just higher, but more

sophisticated, standards. They will need to be vigilant

about such unintended side effects of standards as the

narrowing of curricula.

4. Management strategies

Not to be confused with new managerialism, this

approach includes systematic efforts to create more

goal-oriented, efficient and effective schools by

introducing more rational procedures. The main

assumption underlying this stratey is that there is

nothing fundamentally wrong with current school

structures (Leithwood, 2007). Nevertheless, the

effectiveness and efficiency of schools will be

improved as they become more strategic in their

choices of goals, and more planful and data-driven

about the means used to accomplish those goals. This

approach encompasses a variety of procedures for

strategic planning, especially at the Local Education

Authority level, or Education Zone level (EZ in

Anambra State) as well as multiple procedures for

school improvement planning, and monitoring progress

(eg the accountability reviews managed by New

Zealand’s Education Review Office, the Community

Accountability and Transparency Initiative reform in

Nigeria).

Management strategies to accountability assume

that effective school leadership conforms to what is

sometimes labelled strategic management. Heads

exercising this form of leadership are skilled in

collecting and interpreting systematically collected

data. They develop, with their staffs, clear manageable

goals and priorities for school improvement. Progress

in accomplishing such goals is carefully monitored and

plans refined accordingly. Because EZ resources and

cooperation are often needed to accomplish school

priorities, school leaders find it productive to

develop especially good working relations with their

LEA colleagues.

Evidence reviewed by Southworth (1998) suggested

that these assumptions about effective leadership for

school improvement have considerable real-world

validity but that they are only part of the picture.

Successful school improvement appeared to depend on

establishing and sustaining a culture of enquiry and

reflection, a commitment to collaborative planning and

to staff development, high levels of stakeholder

involvement, and effective coordination strategies.

Establishing these conditions depended on school

leadership which emphasised the use of systematic

evidence, was focused on student learning, and

encouraged careful monitoring of both teaching and

pupil progress. Strategic management in these projects

also entailed developing school improvement plans from

the results of enquiry and reflection, and carefully

monitoring and evaluating the implementation of those

plans.

5. Legal strategies

Legal accountability stresses compliance with

those rules and standards. Rules are usually formulated

by legislatures but can be elaborated through executive

regulation and formulated de novo (over again) by both

the executive branch and the courts (example the

education bills passed by state house of assembly, the

control policies on staff attendance, and sanctions

initiated by the State Education Commission). Legal

accountability often works in conjunction with

professional, political, and bureaucratic

accountability by establishing the broad framework

within which they operate (Anderson, 2007). Legal

accountability strategies also define the structures

and processes through which education is delivered by

defining forms of governance–for instance, school

boards and local control–attendance policies,

desegregation orders, and building codes (Leithwood,

2007). Under this strategy, staff become aware of the

legal implications of their actions and parents help

schools in legal tussles. Where government does not

fulfill their promises as stipulated in policy

documents, they can be sued. Principals and teachers

can also be sued for failures of schools or

embezzlement of school funds.

What has been new since the 1970s has been the use

of legal accountability to specify, monitor, and improve

the outcomes of education in Anambra State.

Historically, states have specified outcomes indirectly

by defining school graduation requirements (Taking of

Junior and Senior Secondary School Certificate

Examination). Beginning in the 1970s and more often

since the early 1980s, however, state governments took

stronger steps that focused on testing students based on

continuous assessments and increasing male enrolment

through legislation.

6. Political strategies

Political accountability in its purest form is

based on making demands on elected officials, mobilizing

support for policy implementation and using popular

participation to implement educational policies. As with

professional accountability, the performances expected

can be quite variable and hard to specify (Leithwood,

2007). They may include curriculum taught, the level of

spending on education, or special treatment for a

constituent's children. They may also change radically

over time so that what the voters want at one point,

they reject at another. Political accountability

facilitates the lobbying of elected officials to ensure

that they act on one's preferences, and it may include

rewarding them by helping them get re-elected. Political

accountability in essence, extends to officers appointed

(more or less directly) by elected representatives,

especially superintendents appointed by elected school

boards (Heom, 2007). Historically, schools in Anambra

State have primarily used a mix of political,

bureaucratic, and professional accountability. The

elected school board members advice principals on

consultative capacity. Still, principals and teachers

had considerable autonomy to choose instructional

methods, even if curriculum standards were rarely

challenging and peer accountability was the exception,

not the rule.

Conclusions

From the foregoing discussion, it could be seen

that most strategies for increasing accountability in

policy implementation make one of six quite different

sets of assumptions about the status of schools and

what is required to improve them. Because of these

assumptions, each strategy places unique demands on

school leaders that require at least partly distinctive

responses to be effective. Putting aside, for the

moment, possible disagreements with the assumptions

themselves, leading school reform premised on any one

of the six strategies to accountability is likely to be

a manageable task. So, in the face of policy

eclecticism and the resulting sense of confusion and

uncertainty, school leaders, with their staffs, parents

and other stakeholders, need to locate and adopt

elements of accountability-driven policy im0lementation

that cohere with their schools’ directions, that make

sense in light of the schools' goals and priorities.

Recommendations

Based on the preceding discussions’ it is recommended

that:

1) The accountability-driven policy implementation

strategies should be implemented in secondary schools

in Anambra State

2) Principals, government agencies, communities and

other private sectors should partner to ensure

accountability-driven policy implementation in Anambra

State.

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