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at all levels—may be a fundamental factor in enabling continuity and sustainable impact. Perhaps the outcome of a successful intervention is the development of a more mature and functioning education system, rather than sustained activities, even if it means that national leadership makes an informed decision not to continue donor-initiated programs. Perhaps the most significant threat to sustained improvement in education programs is the lack of stability in terms of both policy and leadership. When key personnel from the Minister of Education through Directors General and down to supervisors and principals are regularly changed, the fundamentals of development like ownership, leadership, capacity development and commitment are seriously undermined. In these situations, donor programs and bilateral agreements may provide a degree of stability An important factor for sustainable reform in democracies is the extent to which reforms are identified as national programs rather than those of a politically partisan government. In a functioning democracy with periodic elections, national leadership will change on a prescribed schedule. Education initiatives that are closely identified with a particular government may be vulnerable to modification or wholesale change as the succeeding administration seeks to implement its own programs and claim ownership of achievements. Indeed, one of the core challenges for long-term reform is the natural pressure for administration to start anew—and to have a predominant concern about demonstrable impact over the relatively short term of an election cycle. An inherent tension exists between the long-term nature of effective education reform and the short-term focus of political parties. Of course, the historical experiences in educational development cast doubt on any implicit assumption that development project activities always should be sustained. Activities should not be sustained simply because they are initiated— they should be sustained if they have demonstrated measurable, cost-effective, and meaningful improvements over alternative approaches. Nor, as noted above, should they be sustained ad infinitum. The process of development is inherently a process in which interventions and activities change and improve rather than remain static at an achieved state. The concept of ‘development’ itself argues against a narrow or static vision of sustainability. Scaling up Scaling up is a simple and appealing concept that can be quite difficult to understand, and even more difficult to achieve. Different interest groups use 24 SECTION 1: INTROdUCTION
the term differently. Donors sometimes understand scaling up to refer to the challenge of increasing the level and volume of assistance needed for substantial impact. The more common usage is at the country level, where there are at least four ways in which the concept is used: • Scaling up the structure of a program to increase the size or geographic reach. • Scaling up a grassroots organization to expand the number or type of activities. • Scaling up the engagement of an organization to expand beyond service delivery to strategy addressing the structural causes of under development. • Scaling up the resource base of a community program to increase the organizational strength and improve the effectiveness of their activities. In a national education system, the idea of scaling up refers to a program intervention that is applied consistently in all schools in the system. This gets to the essence of the challenge of systemic education reform, which needs to capture significant improvements at two levels: • Effective changes in each school and classroom that improve education quality and learning outcomes, and • Effective changes at the system level (district, state, national) that support and encourage such changes in all of the schools. The challenge of working ‘at scale’ is captured in the dynamic between these two levels. A traditional project approach is to work in a select region or set of schools, perhaps piloting new approaches, in order to achieve a defined outcome. This has clear advantages for donors—it allows for defined results, it is within the manageable interest of a donor, and it includes the kind of direct support to teachers and children that has considerable political appeal to some stakeholders. Because such projects address the problems in a select number of schools, and do not address all of the system problems, the strength of the approach is also its weakness. A defined geographic or target school focus inevitably means that the impact will be limited to a small percentage of schools in the system. In a populous country, even a relatively large school-based program can at best affect 5 to 10 percent of the schools, which does not enable the changes needed for economic development. The concept of scaling up responds to the shortcoming of the traditional project approach. If a project dramatically improves conditions in a few schools, then replicating this success in all schools has a more profound effect on economic development. This conceptual appeal of this simple formulation has been a driving force in development for years, but it has proven maddeningly difficult to do. This may be because the planning for scaling up too often has reflected an SECTION 1: INTROdUCTION 25
Page 1 and 2: The Power of Persistence Education
Page 4 and 5: table of Contents Acknowledgments F
Page 6 and 7: generously granted us their time an
Page 8 and 9: Foreword The United States Agency f
Page 11 and 12: Executive Summary EQUIP2 Education
Page 13 and 14: local points of contact. In fact, b
Page 15 and 16: Namibia has successfully developed
Page 17 and 18: Sustainability in the context of sy
Page 19: • Manage policy engagement and re
Page 23 and 24: After more than 50 years of develop
Page 25 and 26: to the point of functional literacy
Page 27 and 28: An obvious question for donors is
Page 29 and 30: • Was the investment in education
Page 31 and 32: A final perspective on ownership, a
Page 33: and recipients. The World Bank has
Page 37 and 38: Country commitment to improving pol
Page 39 and 40: The importance of these insights, b
Page 41 and 42: Table: Simple, Complicated, and Com
Page 43 and 44: Basic principles of systems thinkin
Page 45 and 46: Among the many aspects of systems t
Page 47 and 48: EQUIP2 Education Systems Reform Fra
Page 49 and 50: may or may not be influenced by the
Page 51: • There are no magic bullets. Par
Page 55 and 56: These case studies look at educatio
Page 57: El Salvador Egypt Namibia Nicaragua
Page 60 and 61: eform support during the 1980s and
Page 62 and 63: system. In the same year, the USAID
Page 64 and 65: CASE ANALySIS: DIMENSIONS OF REFORM
Page 66 and 67: increased during this period, parti
Page 68 and 69: militant groups (at least until 199
Page 70 and 71: the growing political will and capa
Page 72 and 73: political will and experience in bo
Page 75 and 76: EgyPT TIMELINE
Page 78 and 79: El Salvador: Summary COUNTRy CONTEx
Page 80 and 81: financing, and ensuring adequate le
Page 82 and 83: Impact Structurally, the education
Page 84 and 85:
CASE ANALySIS: DIMENSIONS OF REFORM
Page 86 and 87:
2005, USAID assistance further stre
Page 88 and 89:
EDUCO’s success exemplifies a tec
Page 90 and 91:
workshop with representatives of bo
Page 92:
• The continuing commitment to th
Page 95:
El Salvador Time Line Before 1988 1
Page 98 and 99:
Strategies Especially in the early
Page 100 and 101:
In terms of quality, the impact on
Page 102 and 103:
The second aspect is that the profe
Page 104 and 105:
• The complex and holistic nature
Page 106 and 107:
efforts have been studied closely,
Page 109 and 110:
NAMIBIA TIMELINE
Page 112 and 113:
Nicaragua: Summary COUNTRy CONTExT
Page 114 and 115:
ASP won the support of donor agenci
Page 116 and 117:
Nicaragua Education Indicators Indi
Page 118 and 119:
Though the strong leadership of Min
Page 120:
eform. Starting from the early 1990
Page 123:
Nicaragua Time Line Before 1986 198
Page 126 and 127:
growth; primary enrollment expanded
Page 128 and 129:
accountability and corruption led d
Page 130 and 131:
Selected Reform goals, Policy Chang
Page 132 and 133:
Increased sector leadership from MO
Page 134 and 135:
it have to cope with major governme
Page 136 and 137:
management and administration that
Page 138 and 139:
the education system and have limit
Page 140 and 141:
help an overextended MOE to meet se
Page 143 and 144:
ZAMBIA TIMELINE
Page 146:
3 summary Findings and Conclusions
Page 149 and 150:
In addition to an EFA-inspired emph
Page 151 and 152:
from political changes. After 15 ye
Page 153 and 154:
ased management, but were limited t
Page 155 and 156:
is not necessarily limited to indiv
Page 157 and 158:
sector limited the agenda-setting m
Page 159 and 160:
and every new government seeks its
Page 161 and 162:
8. USAID and other donors have been
Page 163 and 164:
CONCLUSIONS This review of five cou
Page 165 and 166:
Ownership It is a central tenet of
Page 167 and 168:
actors is a never-ending process. T
Page 169 and 170:
was beyond the mandate of the Minis
Page 171 and 172:
IMPLICATIONS FOR USAID POLICy AND P
Page 173 and 174:
Bibliography general References Alv
Page 175 and 176:
UNESCO. 2007. EFA Global Monitoring
Page 177 and 178:
Healy, F. & Crouch, L. (2007, Novem
Page 179 and 180:
Sidhom, S. & Al-Fustat, A. (2004, J
Page 181 and 182:
Crouch, L., J. Gillies, A. Florez.
Page 183 and 184:
LLECE, “Conclusiones del estudio
Page 185 and 186:
Miller-Grandvaux, Yolande and Karla
Page 188:
1875 Connecticut Ave., NW Washingto
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