Civil Society Participation and Education Spending of Philippine Cities

This paper presents the result of the exploratory research conducted by a research team of Ateneo School of Government that studied the impact of civil society participation on the responsiveness of local spending for education. Employing both quantitative and qualitative research methods, the said research explored the following: (1) developing a composite index on civil society participation in local education governance; (2) measuring how much of prioritization and utilization of local budget for education is determined by the level of civil society participation in local mandated participatory bodies; and (3) understanding the contextual factors that impact the effectiveness of civil society participation in influencing local education governance. Due to constraints in data, the Composite Index and Regression Analysis results are indicative and inconclusive. However, the conduct of the exploratory research has brought to surface many governance and policy issues on local education governance and civil society participation in local government units or LGUs, as well as research and learning issues on determining and measuring the impact and effectiveness of participation.