Community participation in education: A case study of the Boards of Trustees' experience in the Fayoum governorate in Egypt

Abstract

The current study investigates the case of community participation in the Egyptian education with special focus on Fayoum governorate - province - and its experience in developing Boards of Trustees (BOTs) in public schools. Through a field survey with boards of trustees' members, their perception of the BOTs efficiency, effectiveness and problems is analyzed with reference to the theoretical literature and other international experiences. Main findings point to the fact that the Fayoum model is in conformance with the ongoing paradigm in education calling for increasing shared responsibility for provision. Although respondents were generally optimistic about the potential opportunities for BOTs improving the quality of the educational process, yet their evaluation of the real level of their current effectiveness, was not similarly so. Evidently, more needs to be done to transform the experience of the establishment and operationalization of the BOTs, from being merely a form of pseudo participation, into being more genuine.