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

and initiatives that have received long-standing, iterative support from multiple
system actors, including donors, have integrated themselves into the system
DNA—becoming elements that are not a ‘part of the system’ but elements that
help to identify and define the system.
In both Namibia and Nicaragua, the process of deliberate and planned scaling up
is instructive. The challenge is maintaining the central characteristics that enabled
success at a smaller level. Both countries are facing an “implementation dip” as
the nature of project support changes, and the responsibility for implementing
the program moves to new players and new leaders. The challenges—political,
institutional, and technical—faced in the scaling up process are substantially
different than those faced in pilot implementation. What appear to be most
easily lost in the scaling up are the process aspects that enabled success. In both
the Namibia and Nicaragua cases, much of the deep learning and ownership at
the school and district level was enabled by intensive support from technical
supervisors, facilitators, or resource teachers, and reinforced with periodic
conferences and workshops at the district and region level.
In the rush to scale up in a cost effective way, there is a tendency to look for a
formula, instead of recognizing that the human process of developing ownership,
strengthening new behaviors, and changing systems is done at a school-by-school
level. The substantive reforms that affect teacher and student behavior require not
simply new knowledge, but as Michael Fullan points out, ‘reculturing.’ The most
important lessons from the study on which we report here are about the process
of reculturing education systems.
Measuring Progress
An interesting insight from the case studies is that the factors and events that
had the greatest impact on successful reform efforts are often invisible from
the official accounts and project reports. Although process and structures are
the building blocks of sustainable system reform, they are often ignored or
understated in the official histories of the reforms. The milestones of progress
are often either measures of education progress (such as changes in enrollment,
completion, equity, or learning outcomes) or, more frequently, are activity-level
accomplishments such as teachers trained, materials distributed, or reports
published. In some cases, indicators such as number of policies approved seek to
get at system issues, but are also problematical, as they neither judge effectiveness
or implementation.
SECTION 3: SUMMARY fINdINGS ANd CONClUSIONS
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