“I see that there is a problem that signals a governance issue, a breakdown in supervision and oversight by the Minister and I have to intervene” said the Prime Minister before the House of Representatives, as the news broke.

The case unfolded with the questioning in an audit of the Ministry of Education conducted by the Auditor General’s Department (AGD). The audit is focused on “whether the selected public entities procurement and contracts management activities were conducted to attain value for money (which encompasses the achievement of economy, efficiency and effectiveness)”.

Source: AGD website

In the 2017/8 GEM Report we showed the importance of horizontal accountability mechanisms, such as audits, for exposing corruption, or mis-management within governments. They can also go beyond assessing compliance to audit performance, examining whether service provision is efficient and effective, whether policies and spending align with wider government and sector objectives, and whether organizational decision-making is sound. Poland’s Supreme Audit Office has carried out audits on issues ranging from the use of public funds for education institutions and research to the education of Polish citizens living abroad. The Swedish National Audit Office’s audit of the role of tertiary education institutions in providing lifelong learning opportunities led to a recommendation to the government to review incentive structures for such institutions.

Performance audits are increasingly common even in middle income countries. The Royal Audit Authority of Bhutan identified deficiencies in the school feeding programme and recommended setting standard dietary requirements, adapting menus accordingly and establishing a quality control system with an independent assessor.

Unfortunately, often the oversight function of audit mechanisms is not effective, which has partly to do with capacity. In Bangladesh, there was an average delay of 5 years before government agencies responded to audit observations on primary education and 10 years on secondary, for instance. In Sri Lanka, the Committee on Public Accounts demands follow-up on objections raised by the auditor general. For example, action against the director of an education department has been recommended, yet there has been no follow-up

Outside of public accounts committees, permanent committees on education in the legislatures can help hold governments to account, even though in practice their roles vary between countries. Analysis in the 2017/8 GEM Report of New Zealand, Norway, Peru, the United States and Zambia showed that committees usually carried out ex post reviews and provided oversight on legislation and executive actions, e.g. scrutinizing government actions, reviewing existing laws and recommending changes.

In short, while the facts are still unfolding, the case in the news in Jamaica at present shows how important it is for countries to invest in strong institutions to detect and deter corruption in education. The risk of corruption in all sectors and all levels require accountability mechanisms to be taken seriously. Our 2017/8 GEM Report is a good place to find out more about them.

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This blog looks at the contrasting findings in the 2017/8 GEM Report on Accountability and a recent study by Berbauer, Hanushek, and Woessmann over whether more testing is good for education or not.

Released a year ago on this day, the 2017/8 GEM Report highlighted the multiple layers of accountability in education: different mechanisms, several actors, contrasting perceptions and nuanced meanings across languages.

One of its key messages was that, while accountability was an essential part of a solution package for challenges in education systems, it was necessary that all actors:

‘…should approach the design of accountability with a degree of humility, recognizing that education problems are complex in nature and often do not lend themselves to a single solution.’

It noted the trend in richer countries of tying student test scores to hold schools and teachers accountable. But it found that this approach risked promoting unhealthy competition, gaming the system and further marginalizing disadvantaged students.

In our recommendations, we made clear that ‘governments should design school and teacher accountability mechanisms that are supportive and formative, and avoid punitive mechanisms; especially the types based on narrow performance measures’.

We will be reiterating this message this week at the 5th International Conference on Education Monitoring and Evaluation to take place in Beijing, where the Chinese edition of the report will be shared with the participants.

However, a recent study argues that more testing has a positive impact on education. Drawing on six rounds of data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the authors have concluded that ‘accountability systems that use standardized tests to compare outcomes across schools and students produce better student outcomes’ and that ‘both rewards to schools and rewards to students for better outcomes result in greater student learning’ (p. 28).

So how do we reconcile these seemingly contradictory findings?

Different uses for tests can motivate different outcomes. This makes it important to identify the different ways tests can be used when analysing what effects they have on student outcomes.

The 2017/8 GEM Report showed that, across 101 education systems, some type of test for accountability was found in over 50% of OECD countries and 45% of non-OECD countries. These tests can be evaluative, whereby student scores are aggregated and disseminated at the school level, often through league tables or report cards. They can also be punitive, whereby results are tied to sanctions or rewards for schools. The United States under the No Child Left Behind policy would be the clearest example of a punitive system. Summative policies are those that have tests that are not deemed to be either punitive or evaluative.

Our review of the evidence found that evaluative policies promoting school choice exacerbated disparities by further advantaging more privileged children (pp. 49-52). Moreover, punitive systems had unclear achievement effects but troublesome negative consequences, including removing low-performing students from the testing pool and explicit cheating (pp. 52-56).

Misclassification misleads

By contrast, the way that Bergbauer and her colleagues classify testing systems confuses concepts. This leads to a misinterpretation of how external and internal factors affect student achievement.

Using 13 indicators on the use and purpose of testing, the authors created four categories of assessment use.

1. Standardized external comparisons include assessments that explicitly ‘allow comparisons of student outcomes across schools and students’ and attach rewards to students or (head) teachers. This category conflates the evaluative and punitive categories used in the 2017/8 GEM Report without understanding the key difference between high stakes on students and high stakes on educators.
2. Standardized monitoring involves using assessments to monitor student, teacher or school performance, but makes no public external comparisons.
3. Internal testing resembles low stakes formative assessment for ‘general pedagogical management’
4. Internal teacher monitoring covers internal assessments ‘directly focused on teachers’.

They found a positive relationship between the first two categories and student achievement but no relationship between the latter two categories and achievement. However, a deeper look at the indicators grouped under each category suggests that the four categories may be misleading. Correcting for those misclassifications would support the GEM Report’s findings.

First, the internal testing category (3) is associated with the indicator ‘achievement data posted publicly’. The authors justify this by suggesting that principals are posting grade point averages or teachers are posting grades on the blackboard. But this is inaccurate, as it does not take into account the wording of the question in the PISA school questionnaire, which suggests that achievement is publicly posted in the media, and therefore cannot be classified as internal testing. Their earlier work had emphasized the role of school report cards and league tables as key for facilitating market-based accountability, in contrast with the approach they have taken in this research. Their understanding also directly contradicts how the OECD interprets their own data.

The same is true with the internal teacher monitoring category (4), which uses indicators related to student assessments and class observations. While both these factors can help monitor teachers, placing them in the same category fails to recognize the differences in stakes and motivations when teachers are held accountable for their students’ test scores.

In fact, their results related to the indicators ‘achievement data posted publicly’ and ‘making judgements about teachers’ effectiveness’ suggest the use of test scores for accountability purposes are not associated with greater student achievement, a conclusion driven home in the GEM Report.

So what is driving the results of Bergbauer, Hanushek, and Woessmann? In the ‘standardized external comparisons’ category (1), three indicators are positively associated with student achievement:

• principals use student assessments to compare their school to district/national performance;
• presence of a high stakes student examination at the end of lower secondary; and
• presence of a high stakes student examination that dictates student’s career opportunities.

But the first indicator does not compare schools to schools nor does it make school results public; it is therefore unclear how this relates to external accountability. The latter two place stakes solely on students and not on teachers or schools.

The final indicator driving their overall results is part of the ‘standardized monitoring’ category. They find that those that do more standardized testing do better on PISA. But this practice, teaching to the test, which some consider to be detrimental, is also dispelled by the authors.

A subtler breakdown of results shows that linking test scores to teacher or school accountability has no significant effect on student achievement. Ultimately, we cannot hold individuals to account for something beyond their control, a point the authors also recognize: ‘the optimal design of incentives generally calls for rewarding the results of behavior directly under the control of the actor and not rewarding results from other sources. The problem…is that most testing includes the results of action of multiple parties’.

Let us also not forget that the analysis does not attempt to capture student level equity or gaming-the-system behaviour, both central concerns when using testing for accountability.

A year on, the messages of the 2017/8 GEM Report are as relevant as ever.

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The 2017/8 GEM Report showed that the basis of governments’ accountability to Parliament and to the public is a credible education plan with clear targets that allocates resources through transparent, trackable budgets.

Uganda is into its second decade of producing its Education and Sports Sector Annual Performance Report (ESSAPR), which is compiled by the Education Planning and Policy Analysis Department in collaboration with other Ministry of Education and Sports departments. The overall goal of the ESSAPR is to present an analysis of sector performance and feedback to key stakeholders, including the general public, on government efforts to educate its citizenry.

Findings from the ESSAPR are integrated into a comprehensive Government Annual Performance Report submitted to cabinet, which form part of a whole governmental approach to strengthen accountability.   

As per GEM Report recommendations, the ESSAPR assesses performance from early childhood through to tertiary education against policies and objectives to inform the next sector review, which seeks to identify priority areas for the coming year. It gives an account of ministry actions and their results at the input, process and outcome levels. It offers some analysis of challenges, discusses factors affecting the achievement of goals and contains budget performance information.

Uganda’s education system faces important challenges. Only 61% of 20-24 year olds had completed primary school in 2016 and in 2015 the pupil-teacher ratio in primary education was 46:1. Added to this are one million people who have crossed borders into the country seeking refuge.

To better learn from and understand the Ugandan experience we spoke to Mr Aggrey Kibenge, Undersecretary at the Ugandan Ministry of Education and Sports.

How does the current system of annual performance reporting allow you to improve the quality of education for all? 

The ESSAPR has a chapter dedicated to the quality of education that examines the progress towards achieving quality targets which puts in focus inputs, processes, outputs and outcomes. The reported information in each of these areas guides the interventions that the sector undertakes in the next financial year to improve quality of education for all.

What has your Ministry learned from the experience of compiling previous reports since 2003?

Every year, there are new emerging issues, which have not been covered in previous reports. For this reason the reporting format has to be continuously updated to accommodate new information.

How do you ensure that more education stakeholders are involved in the ESSAPR preparation process?

This is achieved through the Sector Wide Approach (SWAP), which involves representatives of all stakeholders in planning, decision-making, implementation and monitoring and accountability of educational developments in the sector. The SWAP is designed to facilitate the participation of all stakeholders in the ESSAPR preparation process via smaller departmental working groups, which feed into the larger report.

A consultative approach is therefore used during the process of writing the ESSAPR and the key stages include:

1. Constitution of core writing team (Secretariat) based on the broad thematic areas of access and equity, quality, efficiency and effectiveness to collect and collate performance information on agreed thematic areas for consolidation into the ESSAPR mainly from members of the Education Planning Policy Analysis department;
2. Review by Department working groups;
3. Review by the Monitoring and Evaluation Working Group, which is attended by education development partners;
4. Review by the Education Sector Consultative Committee (ESCC), which is also attended by education development partners; and
5. Review and approval by the top management.

From your point of view, in what ways can the current report preparation be strengthened and introduced in other contexts?

The current preparation can be strengthened by bringing more participants on board. For example, a lot of information among the non-state education providers still remains unreported. We therefore need to bring in the private providers who have vital information that we are not able to access.

We can also involve the local government officials who are the actual implementers on the ground. What happens now is that we visit the local governments and education institutions to validate the information in the ESSAPR.

In April 2018 the GEM Report launched its #MakeitPublic campaign calling on governments and regional organisations to report on education progress to their citizens via a regular education monitoring report, and to use those reports as key sources for the education section of their SDG national voluntary reviews

To date over twenty international organizations and Ministries of Education have signed up to the campaign including the Governments of Switzerland and Qatar. You can view additional information on the campaign via our website.

The post Learning lessons from Uganda on transparent education reporting for the public appeared first on World Education Blog.

On June 19, Switzerland published the

The report answers five hundred questions related to education in Switzerland, and examines differences in class size within cantons, stable and differentiated completion rates in upper-secondary education and the transitions between compulsory schooling and further education.

Published in four languages, the 2018 Report takes a deep dive into key trends in the field of higher education, such as high dropout rates at university level, and provides ongoing assessment of existing measures to ensure the highest standards in education. In the blog below representatives from Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) share their observations on the process of authoring the national education monitoring report and how this have been useful for identifying challenges and successes in education.

Tracing progress in education of the past over the past twelve years

Since the initial pilot in 2006 through to the 2018 publication, the Swiss Education Report has become a well-established point of reference and an indispensable tool for Switzerland’s education policy makers.

Let’s first have a look at the report from a systemic perspective. How does our country benefit from it?

As seen from this point of view, the report’s relevance may be summed up as follows:

• It provides us with an up-to-date overview of our education system.
• It is based on evidence and scientific rigor.
• It helps us to better understand our education system as a whole and to assess its performance according to the economically and socially relevant criteria of efficiency, effectiveness and equity.
• It contributes to establish and to continually improve transparency.
• It creates a common language transcending different levels and sectors.
• It serves as a basis for defining strategic objectives for the system’s development, to accordingly propose measures as well as to assess every four years the degree to which the objectives have been achieved.
• It shows us gaps of knowledge and data. Migrants for example (32% of the 15-17 old have a migration background): we currently lack data about the languages they speak, their social background and the time of their presence in Switzerland.
• It provides us with the possibility to better assess the system’s performance in the long run.
• It spurs us to both intensify and diversify research on dysfunctions, causal relations, weaknesses and strengths of systemic relevance.

We shouldn’t neglect, however, the Report’s usefulness as seen from a sectoral perspective:

• 

  It permits the system’s different levels and sectors to view and understand themselves as interdependent elements of a system as a whole.

• It helps different sectors and levels to mutually improve their knowledge about each other.
• It facilitates cross-sectoral approaches and discussions of educational issues.

The Report also recalls us some of the main challenges ahead:

• Keep in mind that the report is a tool. It doesn’t dispense politicians to take decisions and to be accountable for the system’s governance and funding.
• Be aware of fake news and post truth politics. They may look more attractive than evidence based data and causal relations.
• Don’t treasure only what you measure. It is impossible to quantify driving forces such as creativity, individual empowerment, trust and social responsibility. However, they are most likely to thrive in solidly funded educational systems based on accountability, efficiency, effectiveness and equity.

Launched in April 2018, the GEM Report’s #MakeitPublic campaign calls for all countries to report back to their citizens on progress in education. The campaign webpage is a virtual repository for all national education monitoring reports. Visit the site to find out how you can participate in the campaign and view our interactive map to see your country last produced a national education monitoring report.

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The importance of parents for education is obvious from the direct links between people’s family background and their probability of success in and through education. Genetic factors, wealth and family networks are important for children’s education outcomes.

Beyond these, as many parents reading this blog will no doubt attest, engagement with and support to children’s schooling; exposure to cultural activities and availability of educational materials, such as books; and biases or stereotypes, such as unequal expectations for girls and boys, also matter tremendously for educational success.

Let’s look deeper at some of the direct links between the home environment parents set up, and between family background and success in education.

Whether or not a child has a supportive home environment that is, for example, free from violence, affects children’s ability to pursue and focus on schooling.

Parental capacity to engage in their children’s education depends strongly on their own literacy and education awareness, suggesting a strong need for adult literacy and intergenerational learning emphasis. There is substantial persistence of educational outcomes over generations. Contrary to expectations, education can often be a key factor in slowing down intergenerational mobility.

Parents influence matters at different levels. For instance, whether or not parents invest in early childhood education matters hugely for cognitive and non-cognitive skills.

At the basic education level, parental engagement can include involvement in school management committees or parent associations, interactions with teachers, and support for school and homework.

At higher levels of education, parents may provide specific advice on subject choices and preparation for higher education, vocational education or links to employment.

For some of these responsibilities as regards their children’s education, parents can be held accountable, as our last report showed. While students do take on much of the responsibility for their attendance, effort and behaviour as they get older, when younger, it does fall squarely on their parents’ shoulders. Child protection services and other accountability mechanisms, such as truancy laws or parent-school meetings are required when parents are unwilling or unable to fulfil their responsibilities.

Besides actions directly related to their own children’s education, parental preferences and decision-making can have a strong influence on education policy. The most motivated parents and parent groups can influence education decisions, such as support for different types of education provision, curricular content, and public expenditure allocation decisions. For example, in the United States, they pushed publishers to revise textbooks that strongly distorted climate change facts.

Some parents play strong roles holding teachers to account, as we featured in this blog on Honduras, for instance. However, since parent interest groups often have narrower interests, including using schooling to give their children access to the most desirable peer groups to signal their exclusiveness, their political efforts can be at odds with the goals of equitable financing, integration or social mixing.

Finally, parents play a key role in financing education. In most countries, the financing is directed to the education sector through taxation. But in many countries, and particularly the poorest, as the 2017/8 GEM Report showed, parents are bearing the brunt, covering at least one-third of education costs themselves.

As we recognise the hugely important role that parents play, and the heavy responsibilities on their shoulders for their children’s education, we should, at the same time, start to think how they can be supported to be successful. Community support, accessible and understandable information on education, social care policies or cash transfers can help parents fulfil their responsibilities towards their children’s schooling and reward the efforts parents are putting in.

The post Let’s not forget the role of parents in education! appeared first on World Education Blog.

It has become a routine practice to administer pregnancy tests in schools in the United Republic of Tanzania, which has one of the highest adolescent pregnancy rates in the world. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), some 8,000 girls are expelled every year for being pregnant. As recently as last year, John Magufuli, Tanzania’s President, said that no pregnant girls would be allowed to go back to school. The expulsion of pregnant girls from schools has also been reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

International treaties such as the Committee on the Elimination of All Violence and Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Convention Against Discrimination in Education (CADE) and the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESR) are critical in stopping this from happening. They call, for example, for a reduction of female dropout rates (Article 10, CEDAW), an end to discrimination where education is concerned (Article 3, CADE), and accessibility to education for all (Article 13, ICESR). Yet, both the United Republic of Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo have ratified all three of them. This means the treaty mechanisms enabling citizens to challenge governments that violate these rights are not currently being used effectively.

Education plays a big part in empowering women to progress socially and financially. This is why it is particularly important to guarantee access to learning opportunities to all girls in countries where they are most likely to get married or give birth at an early age. The 2013/4 EFA GEM Report estimated that as many as 3.4 million births occur before girls reach the age of 17 in sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia. One in seven young women are affected in the two regions.

Progress in this direction benefits women’s own choices, has been found to improve their health and that of their children, and, in the long-run, to bring about demographic transition from high to low birth rates occur. Empowering women by ensuring they stay in school gives them more control over fertility decisions.

Governments and citizens can stem discrimination against pregnant girls. Several countries have taken active measures to remove the stigmas associated with pregnant girls to promote school retention.

Uganda, for instance, took anti-discrimination measures in 2013 and 2014 against the exclusion of pregnant girls, while also aiming to reduce teen pregnancy and early marriage. The results included a 4% increase in secondary education completion rates for girls. Mexico’s government piloted grants for teenagers to enable them to go back to school post-pregnancy. The country ranks first for teen pregnancies among the 35 member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, according to UNICEF in 2017.

Teen pregnancy is a challenge for all societies. But keeping pregnant girls in school and offering them incentives to return to school after child birth are important ways to address this challenge.

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By Linda Oduor-Noah, a project manager at The East African Centre for Human Rights (EACHRights) on behalf of nine complainants who submitted a complaint through the complaint mechanism of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in April 2018. EACHRights is a human rights NGO established in Kenya in May 2010 to promote, protect, and enhance human rights for vulnerable and marginalized groups. Its Education Support Project focuses on upholding the right to education for all children in Kenya especially those living in informal settlements. Over the last two years, it has focused on trends in the privatisation of education.

Bridge International Academies (Bridge) is a multinational, for-profit chain of low cost private schools that entered the Kenyan education landscape in 2009, backed by an A-list of social enterprise funders.  With over 400 schools in Kenya alone, Bridge is the largest commercial provider of education in the region, wielding considerable influence over policy. While the company’s market dominance alone raises questions, it is their threat to rights that made us pay closer attention. Our findings, corroborated by many other independent sources  including both journalists and academics,  led us to the conclusion that the organisation left a lot to be desired with respect to the rule of law, compliance with education standards, transparency and accountability.

A formal complaint

To date our actions have included advocacy through open calls and joint statements, letters to investors and meetings with some, including the World Bank and IFC who invested USD 10 million in Bridge in 2013. A variety of international quasi-judicial mechanisms have also been engaged with, which saw committees  such as the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the African Commission on the Human and Peoples Rights (ACHPR) and the Committee on Economic, Social & Cultural Rights (CESCR) confirm our concerns in regards to Bridge’s negative impact on human rights.

Despite concerns raised and the evidence presented, Bridge continued to expand. Corporate accountability mechanisms thus became the necessary next step. On 16 April 2018, EACHRights and eight other complainants submitted a complaint to the Office of the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO), an independent recourse mechanism for the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, regarding violations enacted by Bridge.

The complaint outlines the various levels of harm inflicted on each complainant that contravene the IFC’s 2012 Performance Standards, specifically 1, 2, and 4, and the IFCs Sustainability Policy. These performance standards are the internal standards set by the IFC that all their projects must adhere to.

Under Performance Standard 1, Bridge is obligated to respect both domestic and international law. However, the company has consistently failed to comply with national law, education regulations and standards by hiring unqualified teachers, not teaching an approved curriculum and doing so in schools that have not met registration requirements as per Kenya’s Basic Education Act (2013). Schools have also been charged for failing to meet health and safety requirements in various regions of Kenya, a decision that directly puts students in danger. It is highly implausible that Bridge could be collaborating with the government when they have not progressed to the point of compliance after more than five years of discussions.

Performance Standard 1 also speaks to economic discrimination: Bridge claims to serve poor families, those earning under $1.60 a day, yet remains increasingly inaccessible to the poorest and most vulnerable children in these communities who are locked out either due to the high cost fees or other selection criteria. Furthermore, to our knowledge, a large number of parents are unable to sustain fee payments at their current level, resulting in a large number of students missing school due to non-payment of fees. There is also no evidence showing that Bridge’s approach leads to increased enrolments of out-of-school or disabled children, as is the case for other IFC investments in basic education. Transparency and participation are also touched on under Performance Standard 1, which states that information should be accessible and understandable to all stakeholders and affected communities. The complaint shows that the company adopts cosmetic approaches to parental participation with a number of parents characterising Bridge as a company that solicits parents to enrol their children with empty promises.

IFC Performance Standard 2 addresses labour conditions such as recruitment, compensation (including wages and benefits), working conditions, terms of employment and so on. Performance Standard 2 underscores the need to protect workers’ rights, in compliance with national law. Complainants were able to demonstrate that Bridge pays some staff below minimum wage and that the work environment was hostile, with aberrant performance management and instances where due process was not followed in regard to termination of staff.

Lastly, under IFC Performance Standard 4, Bridge is required to avoid or minimize any risk that could negatively impact the communities’ health, safety or security. These safety standards are outlined in section 19 of Kenya’s Basic Education Act and the Safety Standards Manual for Schools, both of which form the basis for Bridge being sued by local government public health departments for violating these standards.

A call for better scrutiny of IFC investments

No state should have to choose between attaining positive learning outcomes and respecting and protecting the rights of all stakeholders involved. This hints at the false equivalencies often raised in this debate. We are not against private education. In fact, we come across and applaud a plethora of dedicated individuals running institutions in service to their communities, facing the challenges of their context head on, day after day. However, commercial chains of private providers that purport to serve the most poor and vulnerable, while simultaneously locking them out and infringing on the rights of teachers and parents alike is unacceptable. The current situation not only weakens our education system but sets in motion what could be the gradual loss of Kenya’s constitutional sovereignty, creating scenarios where corporate actors become de facto policy makers.

By submitting the complaint, it is our expectation that the CAO will launch a full compliance review that will thoroughly investigate these serious concerns and offer strong recommendations to the IFC which will remedy the situation at a systemic level. We hope this will eventually lead to the IFC withdrawing its equity investment in Bridge, as no progress had been made in the last few years,  and that they would take the necessary steps to mitigate any negative impact on the communities in question arising from this decision. We also hope that the IFC would make investments in education that respect national laws and standards that are aligned with human rights, discharging their due diligence prior to and throughout the lifetime of any such investments to avoid predicaments such as the one in which Kenya currently finds itself.

The post Using international accountability mechanisms: A test case for private education in Kenya appeared first on World Education Blog.

The GEM 2017/8 Report, which focused on accountability in education, paid special attention to the role of the media. Every country has assorted formal institutional checks and balances to ensure governments exercise their authority in a way compatible with their commitments, ranging from auditors to parliamentarians. But within a broader political process, informal efforts also serve to hold governments accountable for their commitments, policies and results.

The media can be a key partner in holding governments to account

It is here that the role of the media is critical. The efforts of reporters involve the free flow of information to ensure transparency. People need the media to form and express informed views.

The media have huge potential to raise the visibility of education issues, putting pressure on education actors to meet their responsibilities and pursue policy change. By exposing evidence and directing focus, they can set the agenda for the public and policy-makers.

Media publications offer ways to familiarize the public with education research otherwise accessible only to specialists, and to express dissenting views on established policy decisions. Examples include The New York Times questioning the effectiveness of performance-based pay and The Guardian examining the design of criteria used to assess the effectiveness of tertiary education.

The media have played a role in investigating wrongdoing and reporting potential cases of corruption. For example, in Brazil journalists have covered abuses to the national basic education equalization fund. In Nigeria, newspapers have publicized allegations of ghost teachers or teachers collecting more than their official salary. In India, news networks have carried out investigative work to expose fraud and unprofessional practice in medical training institutions.

In Switzerland, the national public broadcaster Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen questioned the independence of 12 leading universities because of their sponsorship deals, especially within the pharmaceutical industry, and the potential conflicts of interest. It exposed the differences in transparency standards among universities and revealed that one pharmaceutical company reserved the right to alter research results. The findings sparked a national debate on making these contractual arrangements publicly available.

Increasing the flow of information through the media about funding allocation can help empower the public and increase pressure on education officials to act responsibly. In the late 1990s, Uganda’s government initiated a newspaper campaign to publish information on the amount and timing of capitation grant disbursements by the central government to school districts. A decrease in distance of 2.2 km to a newspaper outlet increased the share of funding that reached a school by nearly 10 percentage points.

In Madagascar, the grant received by 20% of schools in 2002/3 did not correspond with the declared amount sent by the district. Anecdotal evidence suggested the funds were diverted to non-education purposes or used privately by local officials. Campaigns via newspapers, radio and television led to the decreased probability of such local exposure, although the impact depended on local literacy rates. Where illiteracy was widespread, the impact of newspapers and poster campaigns was limited, while radio and television were more efficient.

In Mexico, the 2013 National Census of Schools, Teachers and Students of Basic and Special Education revealed some 39,000 teachers nobody had seen or known at their purported workplaces. The results were reported in major national and international media outlets, including El Universal, Milenio and The Wall Street Journal. The Secretariat of Public Education revised its administrative records to update personnel statistics and investigated those who were being paid but not working.

In the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States, an analysis of tertiary education news in 1998–2007 showed the media regularly reported on corruption, including bribes, cheating and plagiarism, but was mostly silent on ethical issues, such as sexual and other misconduct and abuse of public property. There was a stronger emphasis on fraud, plagiarism and cheating in UK and US media, while Russian media focused on bribery in admissions and degree completion.

The media need to be up to the task

In times of rapid change in education, exposing problems and publicizing information are important media functions to ensure government accountability in education. Yet to achieve these and reflect diverse social views, the media need to be independent, competent, reflective, democratic and accountable – qualities often lacking, resulting in public distrust. A survey in 36 countries showed that less than half of respondents (43%) trusted the media and almost one-third (29%) avoided the news. While expansion of the internet and social media may have exacerbated the problem, the underlying drivers of mistrust in many countries have much to do with a politically polarized media landscape. Concentrated ownership, but also restrictions on press freedom, lead to perceptions of media bias.

In many countries, the quality of reporting may be poor. In addition to reflecting inherent bias, the media determine what qualifies as newsworthy. The skills of those researching, analysing, organizing and writing or broadcasting news play an important role in reporting quality. For example, the wide coverage of national and international learning assessments tends to be simplistic, emphasizing league tables and rankings instead of providing more nuanced analysis of causes, caveats and policy implications for which governments can be reasonably held to account.

3 May aims to remind governments of the need to respect their commitment to press freedom but is also, in turn, a day of reflection among media professionals about press freedom and the issues of ethical standards. It is also a day of support for media organisations and the role they play in all spheres of life, including education.

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The Global Action Week for Education (GAWE) embraces the 2018 theme Accountability for SDG4 and the slogan “Keep your promises for education!”. We call on governments to demonstrate political will by producing national education monitoring reports annually as an accountability tool for their citizens. The Latin American Campaign for the Right to Education (CLADE) has embarked on a series of mobilization and advocacy actions in the region.

CLADE: Mobilised for GAWE 2018

CLADE intends to support and encourage public debates on the setbacks and advances in the fulfilment of the right to education in each country, involving the media, education communities and other social sectors. Activities, messages and key demands of GAWE 2018 will be disseminated through the regional blog www.same2018.org and social media channels. CLADE urges its national member forums to demand from the national authorities the organization of public debates on the implementation of the human right to education and the development of regular official monitoring reports, which would also report on the compliance with this right, with an active and significant participation of civil society.

GAWE 2018 will serve as a step in the preparation for the next High Level Political Forum (HLPF), which will take place in July 2018 in New York, where the following countries will present their national voluntary reports: Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico and Paraguay.

CLADE will also be producing a state of the region report on the compliance with the Sustainable Development Goal on Education (SDG 4) for Latin America and the Caribbean. This report will be presented at the Regional Meeting of Ministers of Education in Sucre, Bolivia, in July 2018.

The organisation will aim to popularise the #MakeitPublic campaign by continuously monitoring the fulfilment of commitments made in national education plans and towards SDG 4 in the region, with emphasis on the commitments on inclusive education and education financing: the States of the region signed the obligation to invest at least 4-6% of GDP and 15-20% of their total public budget in education. These monitoring fronts are driven, respectively, through the Regional Observatory of Inclusive Education (OREI), and the Monitoring System for the Financing of the Human Right to Education in Latin America and the Caribbean.

GAWE in the Dominican Republic: For the fulfilment of educational goals, transparency and accountability of the state to the citizens

At the same time and in the context of the GAWE celebrations in the Dominican Republic, the Socio-educational Forum (Foro Socio Educativo – FSE), member of CLADE and GCE in this country, has planned several activities focusing on SDG4 and the mobilisation of civil society around the #MakeitPublic campaign, calling government to continue producing the national education monitoring reports annually and improve its qualiy.

They range from the distribution of stickers, posters, guides for educational centers and brochures at the pavilion of the Ministry of Education of the Dominican Republic (MINERD) during the National Fair of the Book; to organising interviews with officials of MINERD, decentralized institutes and other organizations on the implementation of SDG 4 in the Dominican Republic; to the meeting of a panel with experts on the theme “Four years of the signing of the National Pact for Educational Reform. Have we made progress in the implementation?”, with a view to evaluating the progress, limitations and challenges on the implementation of these commitments and the coordination of the linked social actors.

A new bulletin of the Observatory of the Budget in Education (an initiative promoted by the FSE) will be also released. With the title “The gender focus in education in the Dominican Republic, legal framework and reality in schools. The budget execution of the MINERD of 2017”, the document will be presented to education officials and members of the education community of the Municipality of Tamayo, Bahoruco, on May 3, 2018.

Beyond the GAWE, the FSE has been acting permanently in monitoring the results of different education policies and programs in the country, as well as in monitoring the quality of national educational spending. These actions are driven in line with the National Development Strategy 2030 and the Goals of the Education Agenda 2030.

Thus, the Dominican Republic joins the celebration of the GAWE 2018 under the national slogan “2030 Educational Goals: Transparency and Accountability to Citizenship. Keep your Promises!”.

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Yet, women are less likely than men to earn degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). In countries such as Chile, Ghana and Switzerland, women make up less than a quarter of students enrolled in STEM degree courses.

Stereotypes keep girls out of STEM degree courses

Gender stereotypes are a massive driver of these disparities. Consciously or unconsciously, teachers’ gender beliefs are passed on to their students, inadvertently shaping the choices they make about their futures. For instance, in the United States, anxiety expressed by female mathematics teachers was found to be associated with female students’ perceptions that boys were outperforming them in mathematics.

A randomized experiment in France assessed the effectiveness of a one hour, one-off visit by a volunteer female scientist to grade 10 and grade 12 classrooms. Exposure to such a female role model significantly reduced the prevalence of stereotypes associated with jobs in science, for both female and male students. While there was no significant effect on the choice of track the following year among grade 10 students, the probability of grade 12 students being enrolled in selective science programs increased by 30%.

Perceptions can have adverse effects on a student’s grades; in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, girls showed a significant disadvantage in grades when it came to mathematics. Two girls for every three boys reached minimum mathematic proficiency in grade 6 in Chad and Niger, while 85 girls for every 100 boys reached minimum proficiency at the same grade level in Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Peru.

Certain messages coded in curricula, textbooks and the media can re-enforce long-standing gender biases. They perpetuate notions that men are cut out for certain professions, such as engineering, while women are more suited to others like nursing, discouraging women from enrolling onto and completing STEM degrees.

For one, each sector requires enough human resource capacity to reach its full potential. This cannot be possible if a large portion of women – or men in that respect – are under-represented in the fields that lead to these professions. Moreover, if gender balance is neglected, then the possibilities for innovation and fresh perspectives are reduced in developing affordable clean water and energy solutions (SDG 6 and SDG 7), innovation (SDG 9), climate actions (SDG 13) or sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11).

It is in poor countries where such talent is most needed and yet where women are most underrepresented in STEM degree courses. The 2012 Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking Water (GLAAS), revealed that women made up less than 10% of the water, sanitation and hygiene professional workforce in 74 developing countries. Women accounted for only 7% of such professionals in Papua New Guinea.

How to change gender attitudes preventing women from studying STEM degrees

There are several ways to proceed, as the recent Cracking the code report by UNESCO showed. Governments, educators, civil society and parents all have a role to play in ensuring that prevailing beliefs about gender are challenged to empower women to take on active roles in any professional sector of their choice.

Governments can begin by facilitating scholarships, mentorship and apprenticeship programmes for women to foster their interest and encourage them to sign up to STEM courses.

Where curriculum and textbooks are concerned, governments – with the support of civil society actors – should remove any gender stereotypes. In Viet Nam, the National Strategy on Gender Equality for 2011-2020 made it explicit that textbooks should be screened for gender stereotypes.

Teacher preparation should be revised to ensure that they fight stereotypes. Teacher codes of conduct and training can reduce the instances of gender bias in the classroom. Changes in methods and approaches have already proved successful in Turkey, where student teachers took a course on gender equity that resulted in more gender sensitive attitudes.

Finally, countries may also be held accountable by regularly submitting reports on their obligations towards gender equality, including on STEM degree course participation.

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The most unique aspect of the Comparative and International Education Society Annual (CIES) conference is the convergence of the global education community into a single location. It is a tremendous opportunity to learn about key trends in the field and, most importantly, exchange ideas with some of the best thought leaders in this space.

The 62^nd CIES conference, held in Mexico City, saw a focus on South-North dialogue and South-South collaboration, and an ambition to expand awareness of and engagement with the voices and actors that have historically been marginalized in education research and institutions.

I represented the GEM Report team at this year’s conference participating in several workshops, consultations and panels on topics ranging from accountability, privatization, inclusion, and gender over the week-long event.

Sunday 25 March

Sundays’ pre-conference workshop, co-convened by the GEM Report, the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Open Society Foundations and the Right to Education Initiative, examined the growing phenomenon of privatization in education, in particular in the Global South. It highlighted the need for governments to develop capacities to monitor schools in keeping pace with education expansion, diversification and the increased emphasis on accountability.

“Regulations need to be in place before allowing new or fast expansion of education diversification, and equity considerations need to be kept in mind” remarked one participant during the discussion.

Monday 26 March

We are just about starting to develop our ideas about the 2020 GEM Report on inclusion so I went to a few sessions on inclusive education. Christopher Johnstone of the University of Minnesota is completing a systematic review of inclusive development and the Education Equity Initiative is examining inclusive education policy across 11 countries. To share your views on inclusion and contribute to the design of the 2020 Report sign up for the GEM Report’s newsalerts to find out more about consultations taking place online and in your region.

Tuesday 27 March

We launched our 2018 Gender Review, which shows we are still far from achieving gender parity in education despite considerable progress over the past decade. We were fortunate to convene a great panel including Nora Fyles from the United Nations Girls Education Initiative, Elaine Unterhalter for UCL Institute of Education, and Julia Dicum from Global Affairs Canada. The conversation focused on accountability for gender equality in education and how governments and the international community can strengthen their efforts in that direction. Questions from the floor highlighted the need for long term planning and sustainable interventions to address systemic barriers preventing girls from realizing their right to education and the importance of ensuring that national partners and community organizations remain at the heart of projects to address gender inequality.

Wednesday 28 March

The day kicked off with a lively discussion with representatives from CIES’s Inclusive Education Special Interest Group. The group represents inclusive education experts from several countries including Japan, Egypt, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States and Denmark. The group shared their ideas of possible issues and entry points for the 2020 GEM Report on inclusion, including how the report could highlight successes in the field and set the agenda for a reconceptualization of inclusive education to encompass all learners and not just those with special needs. A follow-up webinar was scheduled to continue the conversation and streamline inputs for the development of the 2020 Report.

The main event of the day was the presentation of the 2017/8 GEM Report on accountability in education. Over 100 academics packed the hall to listen to inputs from panelists including Keith Lewin from the University of Sussex, Raphaelle Martinez from the Global Partnership for Education, Noah Sobe from Loyola University Chicago (and current CIES President) and Sylvia Schmelkes from Mexico’s National Institution for Education and Evaluation (and GEM Report Advisory Board member).

The discussion highlighted ways in which academics and policy makers have responded to the report and its recommendations, with GPE sharing how they are applying GEM Report recommendations, including clarifying the mandate of local education groups to ensure more inclusive participation with actors that have clear lines of responsibility.

The audience joined the report’s questioning of performance-based accountability, especially for teachers, and of results-based financing approaches, which could have detrimental effects, as they focus on outcomes largely beyond individuals’ and institutions’ control – an issue also raised in a recent GEM Report policy paper.

Thursday 29 March

On the final day for CIES 2018 I presented on accountability for school-related gender-based violence, as part of a panel on lessons and promising approaches. I was joined on the panel by Katharina Anton-Erxleben from Raising Voices Uganda, Freya Johnson Ross from UCL’s Institute of Education, and Sujata Bordoloi from UNGEI.

Questions focused on who, if anyone among the multiple stakeholders, is ultimately responsible for stopping school-related gender-based violence. There were also questions about the importance of addressing norms in the community and of looking into online violence, such as bullying in social media.

My favourite takeaway from the discussion was the observation that “changing norms and changing culture has to start with teacher training”. Indeed, for any program to succeed, teachers need to know how to engage with gender issues and address the unequal treatment of girls and boys. Training should equip teachers with skills to deliver curriculum approaches that promote the knowledge, attitudes and skills for preventing and responding to school-related violence.

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The education scene in Chile has seen a few U-turns. Free education was overturned in 1981, which led to an explosion of private providers and one of the most stratified and segregated education systems in the world. High school students hit the streets in 2006. They were followed in 2011 by university students who protested against the cost of tuition, the related student debts, and the rise of private institutions. As a result, when Bachelet was elected for her second term with 62% in 2013, partly on the wave of these protests, she brought in free tuition reforms and turned over the voucher-heavy education system that had been creating unwanted inequalities in access.

It was these reforms that recently have been claimed to be unconstitutional by a group of private universities. They were also claimed by many to be unsustainable, initially estimated by the Ministry of Finance to cost $3.14 billion per year.

Private higher education institutions are nothing new. They have been growing steadily the world over, as we showed in our recent policy paper. They account for 49% of student enrolment in Latin America, rising to 80% of students in Chile in 2015. Chile, according to the OECD, now has the fourth most expensive university system in the world. And, subsequently, the cost frequently falls on students’ shoulders. National education accounts for 2013 show that households in Chile were covering 55% of the costs of total higher education expenditure.

“Chilean families have been taking to the streets for a long time to say we don’t want for-profit education, that we don’t want businessmen filling their pockets from the resources of hundreds of thousands of students,” said Rodrigo Rivera, spokesman for the national students’ association CONFECH.

Our WIDE database shows that, reforms or not, inequalities in higher education access remain. Only 35% of the poorest fifth in Chile attend post-secondary education, compared to 65% of the richest. Is private provision the answer for these inequalities, is the question students are now asking. Does it cover their right to a free education?

And their voice will no doubt resonate just as it was in 2006 and 2011. Youth, as we showed in the 2017/8 GEM Report, have an important voice in holding governments to account. Just as the march in the United States by students calling for better gun laws and school protection is leaving success in its wake, let us now watch to see how this power is used in Chile. It is a perfect case study of accountability in action.

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