NGOs are particularly effective in schools when they __________.

Effective school-NGO partnerships rest on the principle of institutional alignment: an external agency contributes the most value when its programmes are woven into a school's existing goals, curriculum, and leadership structure, rather than run as a separate, parallel effort alongside the school.

Applying that principle here: when an NGO shapes its interventions around the goals the school has already set, its activities reinforce what the school is already trying to achieve. The programme gets absorbed into the school's ongoing plans and routines instead of competing with them, which is what lets the partnership continue and scale over time.

Checking this against the other options confirms the same principle by contrast:

• Operating independently from school leadership keeps the NGO's priorities outside the school's own decision-making, so the work is not woven into the school's plans.

• Focusing only on short-term, measurable results centres the work on what can be captured in a limited window, which says nothing about whether the intervention connects to the school's broader objectives.

• Replacing teachers in regular classes substitutes for the school's own instructional staff rather than working through the structure the school already has in place.

Only aligning interventions with the school's own goals reflects institutional alignment, which is the governing principle for effective NGO involvement in schools.