School-Based Management: A Structural Reform Intervention

Every education institution in the world has its own share of problems that need to be addressed. Some issues besetting the school system, especially the public school, include high dropout rate, quality educational service, high repetition rate, and limited holding capacity of the schools. Over the past decades, many initiatives and reform efforts have been implemented to arrest these problems. One key response of the national government is the adoption and implementation of SBM – School-Based Management anchored on the decentralization trend of the 70s. SBM, a framework of governance, transfers the power and authority as well as the resources to the school level on the assumption that the school heads including teachers, key leaders in the community, parents know the root and solution to the problem. In the Philippines, SBM was officially implemented as a governance framework of DepEd with the passage of RA 9155 in 2001 as legal cover. TEEP, SEDIP and BEAM – two pilot projects implemented by DepEd – support the SBM as an effective mechanism to improve the quality of education in the basic level. Thus, SBM is a viable structural reform intervention used to improve the quality of education in the public school so as to produce functionally literate Filipinos. The big challenge ahead of the DepEd is the implementation nationwide of SBM after the pilot testing.