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Contract teachers are seen by some as a low-cost solution to the teacher shortages in developing countries, which are striving to achieve UPE by 2015. Furthermore, some researchers recently argue that contract teachers who are directly hired and fired by the community are likely to attend schools regularly despite their low remuneration (for example, World Bank 2003; DeStefano et al. 2007; Patrinos and Kagia 2007; Bruns et al. 2011). This paper investigates the extent to which contract teachers called ‘volunteer teachers' in community schools contribute to solving teacher shortages and teacher absenteeism in rural Zambia, through an exploration of the perspectives of the people under study. In the community schools in Zambia, parents and their representatives of Parents Community School Committees (PCSCs) are in charge of hiring and remunerating volunteer teachers. PCSCs are also expected to monitor the work of volunteer teachers and fire them if their performance and attendance are not satisfactory. The study reveals that PCSCs were incapable of locating sufficient numbers of educated volunteer teachers from the locality in practice. This was due in part to the general low level of education among the population of the catchment area and a huge challenge in remunerating him or her highly enough to adequately meet livelihood requirements. Furthermore, teacher turnover was high due to their lower remuneration and social status compared to the teachers in the government schools on government payroll, as well as insufficient material and professional support given by the District office and the near-by government schools called ‘mother schools' In a context of inadequate compensation, the absenteeism of volunteer teachers was also high in all schools. However, PCSCs typically hesitated to take any disciplinary action against teachers, as they judged that they would be unable to find an alternative teacher willing to work for little or no remuneration. Moreover, PCSCs rarely dismissed volunteer teachers because they would rather avoid causing any trouble with teachers who often come from their own neighborhood. Consequently, the right of the PCSCs to fire volunteer teachers did not necessarily result in the greater incentive for the latter to attend schools regularly. Thus, this article argues that volunteer teachers in community schools do not sufficiently contribute to solving teacher shortages and teacher absenteeism in rural Zambia. Community schools in rural Zambia were mostly established by parents who were unable to send their children to government schools due to distance and costs, thus their socio-economic and education endowment is extremely low. In this context, the policy expectation that they are capable of hiring, remunerating and managing teachers effectively may have been unrealistic.

Since the 1990s, the Government of Zambia has pursued the decentralisation of basic\ud education with strong emphasis on active community participation in local education\ud governance, the aim being to increase the accountability of local education institutions to\ud the community. The accompanying liberalisation of the basic education sector is expected\ud to enhance the role of parents as customers with a freedom of choice in the education\ud market; thus, leading to the greater accountability of schools through the market\ud mechanism.\ud \ud This thesis investigates the extent to which these commitments are being practically\ud realised in rural Zambia, which is a largely under-researched area. Specifically, it explores\ud parental and community participation both in government basic schools and community\ud schools, as well as at the district education authority level through the establishment of the\ud District Education Board (DEB).\ud \ud The thesis undertakes a sociological investigation in order to understand the processes\ud involved in parental and community participation from the viewpoints and experiences of\ud the various local actors. Accordingly, it has employed an interpretive paradigm, utilising\ud interviews, observations and document analysis as sources for the study.\ud \ud The findings of the thesis reveal a considerable gap between policy expectations and the\ud realities at school and district levels, demonstrating that some of the underlying policy\ud assumptions have not been met in practice.\ud \ud The thesis found that parents and communities in the rural setting frequently lack ability,\ud agency and the spirit of voluntarism, factors that conspire to form a barrier to effective\ud participation in local education affairs. These obstacles resulted in part from low cultural\ud and economic capital, and the perception that local education matters constituted the\ud domain of trained professionals. Furthermore, the low quality of education on offer and\ud lack of transparency in the management of school resources also meant that parents\ud judged the cost of participation to exceed the benefits. Thus, the policy assumption of the\ud homogeneous, equal, willing and capable community playing a new participatory role\ud cannot necessarily be taken for granted.\ud \ud Moreover, embedded micro-power relations between education professionals and\ud laypeople, as well as amongst the latter, often influence the way different actors deliberate\ud and negotiate in newly created participatory spaces. As a result, the voices and protests of\ud the socially and economically disadvantaged are often poorly articulated, go unheard and\ud lack influence.\ud \ud Laypeople are expected to play a larger managerial role in community schools, which\ud should increase parental power to hold teachers accountable. In reality however, their\ud ability to realise this was seriously constrained. In a context of chronic poverty, the\ud community was unable to remunerate teachers sufficiently, and subsequently powerless to\ud discipline or dismiss those frequently absent from school, given that it was virtually\ud impossible to find other teachers willing to work for little or no remuneration.\ud \ud In terms of choice, parents were also compromised as customer stakeholders in both\ud government and community schools. Many did not have the socio-economic or\ud geographical wherewithal to exercise freedom of choice, which in any case was not\ud adequately accompanied by either incentives or the threat of sanctions that might\ud encourage teachers to perform better.\ud \ud The thesis further shows that teachers and district officials not only lack the willingness to\ud embrace laypeople in their new governance roles but also lack the capacity and autonomy\ud to respond to the demands of parents and communities even when they would like to; the\ud centre still holds controls over many areas while resources allocated to the local level are\ud grossly inadequate.\ud \ud Therefore, the thesis shows that the extent to which the policy of community participation\ud in local education governance and school choice increases the accountability of local\ud education institutions is open to question. Rather, it suggests that both micro and macro\ud contexts play a vital role in shaping the way in which parents and communities participate\ud in local education governance, in what form, and the consequent influence this has on\ud accountability to the community. Thus, with the use of such a sociological framework, the\ud thesis demonstrates the significance of context, power relations, and the differing social,\ud cultural and economic capital that shape the way different actors participate or do not\ud participate; a consideration that tends to be overlooked in the dominant discourse of\ud decentralisation and community participation on the international education development\ud agenda.