Over the past decade, Mali has been engaged in a process of improving access
and quality of education within the framework of the education for all of the
Millennium Development Goals. An important aspect of that process is the
participative schools’ management of local authorities through teachers-parentsstudents
associations. This paper analyzes the role and effectiveness of such
institutional arrangement that involve the local community in the governance of
primary schools in Mali, using the accountability framework and data from the
quantitative service delivery survey implemented in 2005. We find that although
information is likely to be available across the entire chain of education service
delivery, the capability to sanction or to reward the public primary schools
teachers is at the central level. The capability of the local government in terms of
enforceability is weakened in private and Médersa schools while it is somewhat
strengthened in community schools. A simple OLS regression shows no strong
relation between school-based management – through the local community – and
primary schools’ performance. The results also suggest that class size, teaching staff
and teachers incentives are important to schools’ performance.