District Creation and Primary Education Service Delivery in Uganda
Keywords:
decentralization, district creation, service delivery, marginalized areasAbstract
This article aimed at analyzing the effect of district creation on public service delivery at primary education level in Uganda. There has been little or no focus on the creation of new sub-national administrative units on service delivery. To investigate the assertion that new created districts were previously marginalized areas, comparisons were made between the parent and new districts in terms of performance in primary leaving examinations a year after the split of a district. To analyze whether there  is an improvement in delivery of public services after a new district was created, we examined the trend in performance in primary leaving examinations by comparing new and parent districts performance. Our results show that four out of the six newly created districts in 1997 performed significantly worse than the parent districts and the gap in terms of performance between the new created and parent districts narrowed in all districts overtime. Another surprising finding is that  five out of six or 83% of the poor performing districts immediately after the split, were performing better than districts that were performing better immediately after the split, after a period of only nine years. District creation may be bringing public services closer to citizens. This new evidence may provide a strong case for district creation since it is seen to improve service delivery in previously marginalized areas.
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