Linkages Between Microfinance and Effective Education with a Focus on Parental Involvement

This study examines the potential impact of microfinance on the quality of education, by looking into what happens when microfinance clients send their children to school.It addresses the following questions:

• What are the educational situations of the children?
• What could be the impact of parents and teachers upon educational outcomes?

The study looks at:

• The perceived value of education among parents and their involvement levels in their children's education;
• The effectiveness of teachers and their motivation levels.

The study researches one of the possibilities to improve the existing government school system: the involvement of parents. It also identifies possible ways in which microfinance institutions (MFIs) could affect parental involvement by grassroots approaches, and finds that:

• Parents view education as a means to get a good job and a better life in the future irrespective of the gender of the child;
• Microfinance clients are eager to invest in the education of their children;
• However, they are not involved in their children's schooling.

The study concludes that:

• Parental involvement could make schools accountable, with positive results for the quality of education;
• Due to their direct and frequent interaction with their clients, MFIs would be able to affect educational outcomes in ways that top-down development approaches would not;
• MFIs could therefore become an important channel for grassroots education reform.