World Development Report 2018: Learning to Realize Education’s Promise

Education systems are made up of many actors who pursue interests that do not always align with learning. Addressing this requires action on two fronts. First, coalitions of interest groups are needed to build a consensus around the actions that will strengthen accountability for better learning. This often requires mobilizing support from groups that are not actively involved in agenda-setting or that do not engage with others. Second, the incentives of bureaucrats and other system actors need to align more closely with learning (table 11.2).

System actors have a better chance of enacting reforms when they act collectively. Some actors have more power to shift policy toward learning, in part because they are better organized. For example, in many countries teachers’ unions have a powerful voice in debates on reform, whereas the collective voice of parents and students is often muted.

Mobilizing support and building coalitions of a range of system actors have helped to improve learning. Many countries have built support for proposed policy changes through wide-ranging consultations that try to bring together key interest groups. Peru’s Business Association for Education organized an information campaign that helped shift public opinion to support reforms that began in 2006. Government reformers used information on the poor learning outcomes of the education system to mobilize public support for efforts to strengthen teacher accountability, which led to sustained improvements in learning. Alliances between education stakeholders have also formed in some countries to realize the right to education through the legal system (box 11.3).

Though mobilization efforts can be successful at rebalancing interests, they may be less successful at shifting the interests of those opposed to reforms. Education reform is a long process, and well-organized opposition can derail it, particularly during implementation. In Peru, the government successfully mobilized public support to get reforms approved, but it was less successful at getting buy-in from teachers, which led to continued resistance from teachers’ unions during implementation. While the broad reform direction remained intact and learning improved, this experience highlights a potential trade-offbetween managing the politics of reform and getting implementation right. When reformers have to devote effort to managing opposition, that effort can divert attention from implementing reforms well. Lack of buy-in from important groups deters them from contributing to policy design or implementation, thereby undermining the sustainability of the reform.

Building broad-based coalitions of stakeholders is important at all stages of the policy cycle. Malaysia created a performance delivery unit to spearhead comprehensive reforms in many sectors, including education. The unit uses “labs” that build coalitions of stakeholders and involve them in all stages of reform, from design to implementation. Stakeholders typically come together in the labs for six to nine weeks at the start of reforms to discuss priorities, agree on performance indicators, and produce implementation plans. During implementation, minilabs bring stakeholders together to adjust plans. Programs introduced under the process are credited with increasing grade 3 literacy rates in Malaysia from 89 percent in 2009 to close to 100 percent in 2012. The approach has been exported to other countries, including India, South Africa, and Tanzania (box 11.4).

Without efforts to build coalitions for learning, reforms are less likely to endure. Even if evidence shows that the reforms improve learning, their sustainability is at risk when they are misunderstood or unpopular among system actors. In Poland, large-scale changes in the structure of the education system were introduced in 1999 as part of broader decentralization reforms. These reforms have been credited with improving student learning outcomes significantly.

At the outset, efforts to build a supporting coalition were only half-hearted, and despite the learning gains, the reforms have remained unpopular. The election of a new government in 2015 led to heated debate on whether to scrap key elements of the original reforms. Building a coalition may require better communication strategies—or it may require changing the reform design, to one that is second-best technically but easier to implement and sell to stakeholders.

A gradual, negotiated approach to reform may work better than confrontation. Where coalitions of system actors foster collaboration around shared goals, reforms are more likely to succeed. The history of reforms to improve teaching in Chile demonstrates how gradual, negotiated reforms can build strong coalitions for change (box 11.5). Since Chile’s return to democracy, successive governments have adjusted the working conditions of teachers to improve their welfare, while also linking pay and career development more closely to performance. These changes have contributed to Chile’s steady improvement in international learning assessments.

Negotiations can also include strategies to compensate actors disadvantaged by reform. One such strategy is to provide targeted assistance to students harmed by reforms to improve system efficiency. Additional services for children affected by school closures, for example, can ease school consolidations. Another strategy is to use “dual-track” reforms to protect some incumbents from the negative impacts of reforms. For example, pay-for-performance programs in Peru and in the District of Columbia in the United States were initially introduced voluntarily.

Compensating perceived losers can help get reforms approved, but that approach comes with risks. In 2005 the Indonesian government introduced a comprehensive reform program aimed at raising the competencies of teachers. Teacher certification was the centerpiece of the reforms, with teachers required to pass a competency test to continue teaching. In exchange for these new obligations, the negotiated agreement provided certified teachers with an additional monthly allowance as large as their base salary. But early in implementation, the requirements for certification were diluted because of political pressures, so that teachers were no longer required to pass a competency test. In the end, the reforms had little impact on teacher competencies or student learning, but they had a major impact on public spending. By 2011, with less than a third of teachers certified, 9 percent of the education budget already went to certification allowances.

Sustained reform requires strong partnerships between schools and communities. Where incentives for systemwide reform are weak, local action can substitute. In South Africa, the political and economic context has constrained efforts to improve education performance in some provinces, but local progress has been made possible in some schools through strong partnerships between parents and schools. Local partnerships are particularly important in fragile and conflict-affected areas. For example, a program that built community-based schools in Afghanistan reduced the distance to school, increased enrollment, and improved learning outcomes, particularly for girls. Yet these local partnerships tend to work best when supported by responsive higher-level institutions, which are sorely lacking in fragile environments.

The success of reforms depends on the ability, incentives, and motivations of public officials. Managing

Encouraging innovation and agility

learning. Some parts of the solution to low learning public service–oriented personnel, which in turn are relatively straightforward. Inadequate infrastrucmeans commensurate pay and working conditions.

ture and learning materials, while logistically chal- But if the political economy of education is misaligned lenging, can be addressed directly: the technologies with public goals, candidates with less desirable attrineeded are well known, and most education systems butes may be attracted to public service. In Mexico, have enough experience solving these issues. But teachers were often hired based on political patronage improving what happens in the classroom is much rather than merit, which resulted in lower-quality harder. It involves changing student and teacher hires compared with those in test-based systems.

behavior, as well as supporting teachers in efforts to

Efforts to build the capacity of bureaucracies have tailor their teaching to the needs of their students.

been disappointing. Even where individual capacThe traditional approaches to reform—in which pre-ity is built successfully, the incentives to use this defined interventions are introduced with little room capacity to develop and implement effective policies to adapt during implementation—are rarely effective.

are often absent. Put another way, building organiLearning reforms need a more agile approach, zational capability to improve education outcomes with room for adaptation. This is not the same as tends to work best when incentives in education sysexperimenting with different interventions in pilot tems are aligned with the same goals. For example, projects. Rather, it means testing approaches at scale where politicians face stronger incentives to provide in their political and economic contexts and using public goods, this has inspired efforts to build prothe existing capabilities of implementing agencies.

fessional bureaucracies that can deliver better public

A recent review of complex public management services.

reforms, including in education, highlighted the key elements of successful reforms. Those reforms started out with a clear articulation of the problem, together with an initial set of potential solutions, and then adopted solutions that emerged from experimentation during implementation (figure 11.2). Final

Political and technical complexities make it chalinterventions tended to be hybrids, drawing on local lenging to design and implement policies to improve and global evidence.

All systems have some parts that work well; these parts can be used to identify technically and politically feasible approaches to improving learning. In Misiones Province, Argentina, student dropout rates were high. But some schools bucked the trend: teachers agreed on informal learning contracts with parents instead of blaming them for poor student performance. Schools that adopted more constructive approaches to parent-teacher relations saw dropout fall significantly. Schools approach challenges in different ways, so analysis of positive outliers could be useful for policy making (box 11.6).

Local innovations, however, may not be enough to close the learning gap between countries. Employing principles from the growing global knowledge can provide useful ideas for improving learning in specific contexts. A more iterative approach to system change can be a way to adapt interventions inspired by global experiences to local contexts.

Recent examples show how an iterative, adaptive approach can strengthen education systems and improve learning. In India, an experiment showed that grouping children by ability and using level-appropriate teaching along with continual assessment improved students’ reading abilities. Recognizing that a small-scale experiment was no guarantee of success in the government system, Pratham—the NGO responsible for the original evaluation—experimented with different approaches to level-appropriate teaching in government schools. This experimentation tested the assumptions of the original model and identified factors behind the earlier success. It then identified two approaches to implementation that could work at scale. Even in fragile states, where system capabilities are limited, iterative approaches like this have been successful at restoring essential education services (box 11.7).

Policy makers can test policies before introducing them more widely. Whole-system reforms are difficult to evaluate because they lack an appropriate counterfactual, making it difficult to trace the impacts of policy change and adapt strategies to improve learning. Small pilots can overcome these difficulties, but it is hard to assess whether they will be effective without the attention and nurturing that can occur in a pilot. As a middle way, China and other countries have tested new policies in specific regions. Policy makers first identify the main problems; then they agree on which solutions to subject to experimentation. They develop proposals for experiments, in part by analyzing solutions adopted in other countries to tackle similar issues, with different regions trying alternatives. Successful policies are then rolled out to other regions. Belgium and the Netherlands have adopted similar approaches.

Giving stakeholders the authority and autonomy to adopt such approaches runs counter to how many education agencies operate. Closed systems limit the autonomy of system actors and judge performance based on compliance with formal rules over resource use, leaving little room for innovation. By contrast, more open systems that have a sharper focus on outcomes are more likely to see greater innovation across the education system (table 11.3).

A capacity to learn from the implementation of new innovations is vital. Information systems that provide rapid, regular, accurate feedback are crucial for more adaptive approaches to improving learning. Some countries are beginning to build these kinds of capabilities into their education agencies. Peru’s MineduLAB in the Ministry of Education is a collaboration between government agencies and experienced researchers. The lab introduces innovations directly into government schools, and information from minopportunities to improve broad-based learning.

istry systems (rather than individual data collection

This context changes infrequently, but when it does exercises) must be used by researchers to evaluate the change it provides opportunities for significant new programs. Results must also be available within changes in education policy. During the martial the same academic year. In MineduLAB’s first year, law period of the 1970s in the Philippines, governinnovations included providing more comparative ment spending on education fell below 2 percent information on school performance and introducing of the gross domestic product (GDP). In the 1980s, modules to encourage primary school students to the People’s Power Revolution restored democratic adopt a growth mindset. The program is still new, but rule, ushering in a new government that was more its approach is promising.

responsive to demands for broader access to edu- To be sustainable, these approaches need broad supcation. Trade liberalization increased the demand port. Though this iterative approach can help in develfor skilled workers, further raising the incentives oping more effective strategies, it comes with risks for better education. With these societal shifts, for actors in education systems. Politicians can incur public investment in education increased by 2 significant costs if experiments fail or divert resources percentage points of GDP between 1980 and 2000 away from more traditional activities. Students can (figure 11.3).

also suffer if new approaches disrupt their schooling

Critical junctures often arise from broader decenwithout improving it. Yet some risk-taking is vital if tralization and reform efforts, as in the education education systems are to improve learning. Mobilizing reforms in Latin America during the 1990s. Beyond stakeholder support and providing space for consultashifting responsibility for education services to local tions from the outset can reduce the risks.

governments and schools, decentralization can provide opportunities to better align important elements of education systems. After early decentralization reforms in Poland, the government introduced

Politicians and education system managers also formula-based funding mechanisms to link school need to respond quickly when changes create funding levels more closely to school needs. This shift aligned funding with new realities, helping the system reduce inefficiencies.

To innovate effectively—as indeed to build coalitions and use information for reform—education systems need strong, competent leadership. Research highlights three key attributes of effective leaders. First, they can clearly articulate problems and present clear visions for how to tackle them. Second, they mobilize human and financial resources around agreed-on goals and build coalitions to advocate for change and support implementation. Finally, effective leaders focus on identifying solutions that fit the institutional context.