Education Reform Support: An Update

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Education Reform Support An Update

• August 3, 2006

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Education Reform Support An Update

1. What is education reform support?
2. How do projects incorporate reform support
   activities?
3. What else is needed to help program staff better
   understand and operationalize education reform
   support activities?

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Why Reform?

• Cannot continue to define the problem as needing
  more resources for expansion (EFA)
• Repeated calls for universal access lead to
  estimation of the funding needed, massive
  shortfalls in additional assistance, followed by
  recriminations about inadequate funding or lack
  of political will
• Even with impressive gains in access and tons of
  resources, learning is limited
• Reform is still needed

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Requirements of Reform
Build Schools
Decentralize
Civil Society
Leadership
Eliminate Fees
Buy Off Unions
Expand Access
Hire Teachers
Reallocate Resources
Reform Civil Service
Resources
Improve Instruction
Retrain Teachers
Rewrite Laws
New Management Systems
Institutional Capacity
Improve Quality
Politics
Retrain Administrators
Testing and Accountability
Design New Funding Formula
Mobilize Stakeholders
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Contribution of Education Reform Support

• ERS does not try to explain all the complexities
  of reform, nor does it try to identify every
  factor that may influence reform outcomes
• Focuses on the politics and process of reform
• Applies the logic of projects i.e. discrete
  inputs, activities and processes can lead to
  desired outcomes
• Messiness of reform can be addressed, but
  projects will need to be strategic and
  opportunistic, not linear

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Contribution of Education Reform Support

• Clearing Space
• Clearing away mental, institutional and
  political obstacles
• Filling Space
• Promoting, experimenting, modeling the substance
  of a reformed system and defining the conditions
  of success for reform implementation
• Building Reform Support Infrastructure
• Bringing together the variety of actors with the
  broad range of capacities needed to
  systematically and continuously clear and fill
  space

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Clearing and Filling Space
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The Basic Tool Box

• Data and Information
• demand-driven approach to data
• creative use of existing information
• surveys
• Analysis
• cost-effectiveness of policy options
• quantifying inequities
• cost projections and simulations
• Dialogue and Communications
• policy presentations, debates, deliberations
• social marketing and mobilization campaigns
• media campaigns
• Networking and Promoting Reform Support
  Infrastructure
• seeding collaborations and coalitions
• financing coalitions, collaboratives, networks
• encouraging and financing advocacy NGOs

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Education Reform Support An Example
Policy Dialogue on School Quality in Peru

• Data
• Simple reading assessment (fluency of reading -
  words/minute)
• Recording of students reading a passage
• Characteristics of schools where students read
  best
• Dialogue and communication
• Live policy dialogue sessions in four localities
• Broadcast on prime-time TV
• Editorials in newspapers, discussions on talk
  shows, etc
• Strategic choices/opportunities
• Use of video decided after seeing how powerfully
  people reacted to recordings of children reading
• Video opened up broadcast possibilities
• Performance indicators that reflect reading
  fluency
• Reading fluency added to national household survey