Describing the Participation in Education: The Influence of Participatory Management on the Academic Outcomes in Public Primary Schools in Peru

National and international literature about Peru shows that one of the most significant results in education has been a rapid progress towards universal enrolment at the primary level, but with poor results in quality and equality. Because deficient management has been attributed as one of the most relevant reasons to this problem, participatory management has been implemented with the goal of improving the quality of teaching and learning. This research tries to respond to two main questions related to this new international school-based management approach and its impacts on the quality of education: i) how does participatory management influence academic outcomes?; and ii) what functions of participatory management have an impact on academic outcomes? This research also analyzes why there are not conclusive results about the relationship between participatory management and school effectiveness. This paper shows that participatory management has a moderate effect on academic outcomes; being its more significant function the vigilance of teacher’s attendance.