Are disadvantaged schools slow to adopt school-based management reforms? Evidence from India

Abstract School-based management reforms continue to be popular in developing countries, but they may have the effect of increasing educational inequalities if (a) advantaged schools adopt them early while disadvantaged schools do not, and (b) they lead to quality improvements in adopting schools. It is therefore instructive to examine the adoption behavior of advantaged and disadvantaged schools. This article examines the correlation between aspects of school (dis)advantage and the time to adoption of school-based management arrangements in Indian government schools. It finds that better-resourced schools – those with greater levels of school infrastructure and more educated teachers – did adopt faster. On the other hand, keeping everything else constant, schools catering to rural and socio-economically disadvantaged communities also adopted faster. The results suggest that low levels of school resources pose barriers to early adoption, and hence effective embedding of SBM reforms is likely to require targeted support for poorly resourced schools.