Creating Education Systems Coherent for Learning Outcomes

Abstract

Existing systems of education have some elements promoting learning as an objective, but are mainly coherent as systems only around enrollment targets. This paper builds an accountability framework of actors and the four design elements of accountability (delegation, financing, information and motivation) to emphasize that effectiveness in promoting learning requires systems of education that are coherent, in two ways. First, each accountability relationship has to be coherent across its elements, that is, the delegation of what agents are asked to do has to be coherent with the financing, information, and motivation, rather than "pay for one thing and expect another." Second, the relationships have to be coherent across relationships of accountability. That is, if teachers are accountable both to their employer and indirectly to parents/students/communities, then if these two have very different objectives the accountability of teachers will be made incoherent. Such incoherence can explain why small changes in the "right" direction (towards that of high performing systems or demonstrated in other contexts) might consistently fail even where a directed and coherent reform could have major impact.

Higher Grounds: Practical Guidelines for Forging Learning Pathways in Upper Primary Education

“…The literature shows that other factors such as strong school leadership, the introduction of learning support staff, and strong educational systems with appropriate accountability also help improve learning outcomes (Godwin & Bellinger, 2019). As with lower primary, effective upper primary programs will need to collaborate closely with country governments to facilitate changes in systems and policies that support changes in teaching and learning in pre-service teacher institutions as well as in schools in general (Pritchett, 2015).…”

Creative Destruction or Idiot Winds: Schumpeterian Theory Meets the Educational Sector in Developing Countries

“…An important implication of this simple analysis is that we might have to think about how to adapt the "five-fold model of delegation" to allow a bit more flex in the system to accommodate two important features of a national educational system that are both empirically and normatively important. (Pritchett, 2015) First, one must remember that the "principals" who pay for, regulate, and arbiter the value of the educational system occupy different social and institutional positions. On one hand, there are the citizens, taxpayers and their elected representatives; on the other hand, there are the customers or clients of the system, and on the third hand (!)…”

“…Of course, in order to create more flex in the system to accommodate different ideas about the values that justify educational efforts, the best methods for producing that value, and the social location of real expertise in educational policy and programs, a system designer and manager runs the risk of undermining the discipline, accountability and control that could be relied upon to produce reliable (or better still, excellent) performance. (Pritchett, 2015) But greater flex also offers the advantage of producing some natural or planned variation in practices at different levels of the system that could produce improved performance via several different routes: first, a greater capacity to adapt educational goals and methods to individual, or group, or local jurisdiction characteristics, and therefore produce both greater satisfaction with the responsiveness of the system to the preferences of different principals; or 2) a wider exploration of methods that might be valuable not only within particular niches in the system, but also for the overall or median conditions on the system. This observation sets out the what often seems to be a fundamental tension between the idea of ensuring excellent performance in the short run through strict forms of accountability for performance on one hand, and ensuring even more excellent performance in the future through institutional structures and processes that not only tolerate, but encourage departures from existing practices in the expectation that we can find better ways of performing in the future.…”

“…We need not only disciplined performance, but disciplined learning to improve performance. (Pritchett, 2015)…”

Systems Research in Education: Designs and methods

“…New evidence on learning outcomes has also generated an understanding in education research that, whilst planning for improvements in education quality will necessitate 'more of the same' (in the form of more spending on inputs such as building classrooms and providing more teachers), doing this alone will not be enough to achieve improvements in quality that are urgently needed (Pritchett 2015). As a result, there is far greater emphasis on both the generation of more rigorous evidence and the use of that evidence to inform the design of interventions, programmes and policies that go beyond 'more of the same'.…”