Building Support for Education Reform

Mobilizing everyone who has a stake in learning has been an important strategy in efforts to improve learning. Many countries have used wide-ranging consultations that have tried to bring in all interest groups to build support for proposed changes in education policy. Malaysia used a “lab” model to bring together coalitions of stakeholders and involve them in all stages of reform, from design to implementation. Mobilizing citizens through regular information and communication campaigns can also be an important strategy. In Peru, reformers in the government used information on poor learning outcomes and performance of the education system to mobilize public support for reforms to strengthen teacher accountability. That information also catalyzed action by the business community, which funded a campaign highlighting the importance of quality education for economic growth. In parts of Peru, parents used this entry point to protest teacher strikes that had disrupted schooling. Another tool for building coalitions is to bundle reforms, so that each actor achieves one of its top priorities. For example, a commitment to modernize vocational training—a reform that could help employers immediately—could buy their support for broader education reforms.

Where feasible, a negotiated and gradual approach to reform can provide a more promising alternative to direct confrontation. When system actors agree to collaborate and build trust around shared goals, the chances of successful reform are likely to be higher. In Chile, successive negotiations between the government and the teachers’ union built broad support for a series of reforms that adjusted the working conditions of teachers to improve their overall welfare, while linking pay and career development more closely to performance. One approach used by several countries has been to compensate actors who might lose out from reforms. In other cases, dual-track reforms have been introduced to phase in changes in a way that protects incumbent actors from their effects—for example, in Peru and the District of Columbia in the United States, pay-for-performance schemes were initially voluntary.

Building strong partnerships between schools and their communities is also important for sustaining reforms. Where political and bureaucratic incentives for reform are weak, action at the local level can act as a substitute. In South Africa, the political and economic context constrains efforts to improve education performance. Yet progress was made in improving outcomes at the local level through strong partnerships between parents and schools. Even where broader incentives exist to improve learning, community engagement at the local level is important and can complement national or subnational change efforts.

To develop effective learning approaches that fit their contexts, education systems need to encourage innovation and adaptation. In many education systems, schools and other education institutions regularly adapt to changing circumstances. Through these adaptations, innovative solutions to education challenges often emerge. Exploring the well-performing parts of any education system can reveal technically and politically feasible approaches to the problems systems face in improving learning. For example, in Misiones province in Argentina high student dropout rates were widespread, but some schools seemed to buck the trend. A closer look at these “positive deviants” revealed very different relationships between teachers and parents. When other schools adopted the more constructive approach to parent-teacher relations used by the successful schools, their dropout rates fell significantly. Burundi, while recovering from a civil war, used an adaptive approach to find the right way to get textbooks to schools. It reduced delivery times from over a year to 60 days—then replicated that approach in other areas.

Incentives are important in determining whether systems innovate and adopt emerging solutions at scale. Systems that are closed, that limit the autonomy of teachers and schools, and that judge performance by the extent of compliance with rules governing resource use often provide little room for innovation. By contrast, more open systems that pay more attention to overall outcomes and reward progress in raising outcomes are more likely to see greater innovation and the diffusion of new approaches across the education system.