Page 18 used in certain times of the year; the proportion of desks in poor condition; and whether the school has a library.

61. Both the questionnaire directed at school administrative representatives and that directed to teachers generated many important human resources variables, whose impact on students‟ performance has been investigated also by previous studies. These are: the student-teacher ratio; the average years of schooling of teachers, the average years of experience of teachers, the proportion of “local” teachers (i.e. those who grew up in the location where the school is), and the average and lowest wages received by teachers in the school. Moreover, we have information about the school directors‟ years of experience (as a school director), whether he or she received any school management training, and whether he or she is a “local” (i.e. grew up in the village/town where the school is located). Finally, we attempted to control for teachers‟ motivation – which is often considered a possible omitted variable in previous studies – by asking teachers whether “lack of teacher motivation” is a major or moderate problem in the school, as opposed to a minor or a nonexistent problem. In each school we compute the proportion of teachers who believe that teacher motivation is not a problem in the school.

# _2.b.3. Measures of “Top-down” accountability and transparency_

62. Regional Education Directorates (REDs) have no authority over the amount of funds allocated to schools – these are centrally established by MoES – and their administrative heads are centrally appointed; they are however responsible for the appointment and transfer of teachers, the distribution of administrative materials to schools, inspections of schools, as well as planning and supervising the construction of new facilities and major rehabilitation of existing schools.<sup>22</sup> Besides employing RED fixed effects in our regressions, we aimed to directly account for differences in topdown accountability across schools by asking school directors and teachers specific questions about monitoring and possible penalties. Our main variables of interest are: the number of visits of RED representatives in the previous academic year (January-May 2009); whether the school director is subject to penalties if he/she underperforms (self-reported by school directors); whether teachers are subject to penalties if they underperform (self-reported by teachers); and the days of unjustified absence of teachers in the month of May 2009, as reported in the teachers‟ absence registry, in the schools where such a registry is kept.

63. To measure transparency, we report whether the school keeps a teacher absence register and if it publicly displays teachers‟ absence and students‟ performance in the final year examination. We also generate a measure of corruption in the appointment of school directors and teachers based on perceptions of all the surveyed stakeholders. Each respondent was asked to evaluate how often school directors (teachers) are appointed to posts based on personal connections rather than their qualifications, using a 5-item Likert scale, ranging from “never” (1) to “always (5). In each school we consider the proportion of respondents that answered “often” or “always” to the above questions.

# _2.b.4. Parent Involvement in Participatory “Bottom up” Accountability Structures_

> 22 The REDs are also responsible for teachers‟ salaries, which are paid using the total budget allocated by the MoES, and for the collection of information at the district level and transmitting this information to the Ministry. The local municipalities/communes have very limited responsibility for the delivery of education services. Under the current arrangements, they receive conditional transfers from the MoES, through the REDs, to cover teachers‟ salaries and scholarships for pupils in secondary schools. They also receive unconditional grants from the Ministry of Finance to cover operational and maintenance expenditures, including minor repairs for the maintenance of buildings, and recurring costs (water, electricity, sewage, heating, bussing, etc.). The grants, however, are not earmarked for education, and municipalities and communes are also expected to finance other public services from it. The size of the block grant is decided based on population, area, and an urbanization coefficient (see Tibi, et. al., 2004).