Orest Masue

Empowerment and Effectiveness of School Committees in Tanzania: a Tale of Two Local Government Authorities Orest Masue

Empowerment has become a popular word in the development agenda of the New Public Management era. In Tanzania, different policy initiatives such as decentralization and participatory governance have been embarked on as key empowering processes to enable the grassroots levels take the responsibility of managing their own development. The concern of the study that led to the publishing of this book was to assess the extent to which school committees are empowered make and implement decisions at the local levels. The study also examined the effectiveness of the committees in accomplishing their roles. The findings indicate some positive achievements in some basic aspects such as community mobilization, oversight of daily activities and classroom construction and repair. However, there was sufficient evidence that the school committees suffered serious inadequacies in financial resource, knowledge and skill capabilities to the extent of compromising their empowerment and effectiveness. On these grounds therefore, my conclusion is that not outstanding but impressive achievements have so far been accrued regarding the empowerment and effectiveness of the school committees.