El poder de las entidades territoriales para mejorar la calidad de la educación básica

The decentralization process assigned territorial entities in Colombia the task, among others, of improving the quality of education. Formally, the General Participation System (GPS) was designedas a mechanism to assign territorial entitiesthe necessary resources to comply with their new tasks. Although resources are necessary, appropriate coordination among government levels enhances the effecton the educational quality of the resources available for the territorial entities. Using a multilevel perspective, linear hierarchical models were used to find the course of action at departmental and municipal levels that permit improving the average quality of education of the municipalities. The results suggest that own resources, at the departmental and municipal levels, are effective in increasing the quality of education if used in principle to solve the basic needs of the local population, while the SGP resources show a positive relationship with quality in education, but small in magnitude.