The Power of Persistence: Education System ... - EQUIP123.net

CONCLUSIONS
This review of five countries’ experience in reforming education is a slice of
a much more complex reality. In the countries studied, some programs were
continued for a decade or more, while others were eliminated or modified
substantially at the conclusion of the original program. It would be an error to
label the reforms as a success or failure on the basis of a limited, project-based
notion of sustainability. More important than continuing specific interventions is
the existence of a continued system response to improve education.
Positive system change and performance do not come about through efforts
in any one dimension—political, institutional, or technical—but through the
interactions between them. It is at the intersection of interests within these
dimensions that facilitative activities such as information use, evaluation, and
communication of results can have considerable leverage.
Though the countries represent a range of cultures, regions, and conditions, this
review cannot provide a comprehensive and exhaustive analysis of the universe
of developing countries. Nonetheless, the experiences of these countries are
consistent with the broader literature on reform and offer insights that may be
instructive in developing realistic expectations and identifying what is important
in development.
The fact that reforms play out over a considerable period of time during which
the players and circumstances change has profound implications. Rather than
thinking of education reform as a formula, or as a technical or engineering
problem to be solved, it may be more useful to think of reform as a movie, full of
plot twists and character flaws and periodic events; and managing this narrative
are contending interests of producers, directors, investors.
Critiques and evaluations of education assistance showing lack of impact or
questioning sustainability can be put in perspective once we understand reform
as a long-term narrative. Evaluation is inevitably a snapshot—a static glimpse of a
dynamic process stopped at a particular point in time. A snapshot of the reforms
in these five countries at any given point in time could show misleading views:
unvarnished success in one frame, dismal failure in another. Most of the reforms
and events in these five countries could be judged (and have been) as grand
success or dismal failure based on a snapshot taken without the benefit of context
or plot—or without carefully reviewing and analyzing earlier actions and conflict.
A limited frame focus on individual elements such as teacher training or pilot
programs in isolation shows something quite different from the view from the
long-term perspective.
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SECTION 3: SUMMARY fINdINGS ANd CONClUSIONS