By Tamar Manuelyan Atinc, Lindsay Read

This message is loud and clear in two flagship reports on global education, both released this month: the Global Education Monitoring Report, the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) annual snapshot of progress toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goal on Education (SDG4), and the World Bank’s 2018 World Development Report, the first in the series to focus on education since its start in 1978.

What, then, is a country supposed to do when looking to improve student learning when there is no tried-and-true prescription for what an education system needs to look like? When simply replicating “best practices” is not enough to ensure that all children are learning? When what is effective in improving learning in some contexts may not work in others, or may even be detrimental?

The answer is that decisionmakers need access to and capacity to use consistent, high-quality data on how the system is performing, evidence on what affects student learning in their context, and the motivation to work toward the ultimate goal of equipping all children with the skills they need to succeed in their lives.

This intersection between information and accountability was the theme of a recent conference of education officials from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Participants from Algeria, Jordan, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Palestine gathered to share innovative monitoring and data collection processes, and discuss strategies to enhance accountability among educational actors: the state, schools, and citizens.

Schools in Jordan, for example, are visited regularly by teams of assessors from the recently established Education Quality and Accountability Unit, an independent unit within the Ministry of Education, to check progress toward standardized national quality indicators. Assessors are highly experienced teachers, principals, and advisors that receive 18 months of intensive training to evaluate school development plans, observe teachers and classrooms, interview students and parents, review student achievement, and make clear recommendations for action based on a mix of quantitative and qualitative indicators.

Similarly, Palestine has introduced results-based management processes that employ program managers to monitor and collect data on 88 total indicators (48 quantitative, 35 qualitative, and 5 process-level) related to the goals of the latest Education Development Strategic Plan. The results-focused approach aims to enhance internal accountability at all levels by avoiding conflicts of interest between policymakers and program managers.

Relevant, standardized, and comparable information about the quality of educational services in schools has been largely unavailable to stakeholders in the MENA region until very recently. In addition, critics have claimed that the region focuses too much on “engineering” education and too little on incentives and accountability relationships.

Stakeholders, however, appeared eager to employ new accountability strategies to address the triple whammy of the current learning crisis: low levels of learning, high inequality, and slow progress.

One proposed solution: The creation of a regional assessment agency to administer student assessments. The regional assessment could yield high-quality and comparable data across countries, replacing current national assessment systems recognized by participants as inadequate and misleading. The agency could be a cornerstone of accountability efforts and remedy the discouragement felt by countries from poor performance on international assessments.

While there are no global solutions to education, it is clear that stakeholders can leverage regional similarities, such as common language and cultural context, to address shared difficulties.

      

 

 

By Mariama Sow

The ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Africa’s Agenda 2063 are now well underway. Notably, though, policymakers and other stakeholders often encounter challenges when trying to measure countries’ progress towards these aims—particularly when it comes to data. The SDGs contain 232 indicators that measure countries’ performance towards the 17 goals, but 62 percent of them are not trackable in Africa due to severe data limitations according to the report, “2017 Africa Sustainable Development Report: Tracking Progress on Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals.” This report, by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), in collaboration with the African Development Bank, the African Union, and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), explores the progress that the continent has made towards the SDGs while also identifying the data gaps facing policymakers and implementers. On a positive note: In many areas, especially in health, where data is more available, Africa is making progress. 

Poor data availability challenges tracking progress on SGDs and Agenda 2063

 The report largely attributes the poor availability of data to inefficiencies at the local statistics collecting agencies. According to the report, only 12 of Africa’s 54 countries have autonomous statistics offices. In addition, Africa’s national statistics offices have often been marred by insufficient funding and a lack of autonomy. Data quality is another challenge, according to the report, due to differences in methodologies and a lack of coordination across national statistics systems.

As seen in Table 1, indicators under certain goals are easier to track than others. For instance, Goal 3—Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages—is the most trackable with 69 percent of indicators having available data. Conversely, there is no data available to track Goal 13—Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. Indicators under this goal include the number of human casualties directly tied to disasters and the proportion of local government that adopt local disaster risk strategies.

Table 1. Sustainable Development Goal data availability on African countries

Source: 2017 Africa Sustainable Development Report: Tracking Progress on Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals. 

Africa made noticeable progress on health indicators during the Millennium Development Goal era

As noted above, SDG Goal 3—which is fully aligned with Agenda 2063 targets on child mortality, incidence of TB and HIV, access to maternal health care, among others—has a relatively large share of trackable indicators. Africa has been performing well: For example, over the last 15 years, given that the data is available, we can see that the progress toward reducing child mortality has been faster in Africa than in any other region, as under-five mortality dropped by 46 percent between 2000 and 2015 (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Under-five mortality rate by region

Source: 2017 Africa Sustainable Development Report: Tracking Progress on Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Importantly, the availability of data also allows policymakers to pinpoint areas for improvement. For example, often a reduction in child mortality can be attributed to improved maternal health, in which Africa has done well. Another key determining factor is the presence of skilled health professional during birth. According to the data, while progress has been made in increasing the share of births attended by skilled health personnel in Africa, there remains room for progress (Figure 2). With this information, policymakers are alerted to areas for intervention.

Figure 2. Proportion of births attended by a skilled health professional

Source: 2017 Africa Sustainable Development Report: Tracking Progress on Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals.

In conclusion, tracking the progress toward the SDGs and Agenda 2063 remains a challenge in face of data limitation. Nevertheless, in cases where data is available, we note that notable progress is being made, such as in child mortality, and can identify specific gaps to make a country’s progress towards achieving the SDGs even more successful.

      

 

 

By John McArthur

On November 15, John McArthur appeared on TVOntario to discuss how Canada is doing domestically on achieving the internationally agreed Sustainable Development Goals.

      

 

 

By George Ingram, Jonathan Papoulidis

Fragile states are at the center of today’s global development crisis. By 2030, an estimated 80 percent of the world’s extreme poor will live in these perilous places. While international actors have broadened their focus to cover fragility, conflict, and violence, this has not come with high-level political calls to recognize “fragility as the new development frontier.” Fragility merits top billing and should encompass security reform, peace building, poverty reduction, environment, humanitarian assistance, and equity. 

At a Brookings and World Vision roundtable earlier this month, experts from multilateral institutions, the U.S. government, think tanks, universities, and nongovernmental organizations discussed this urgent challenge.

The following are our key takeaways.

Framing fragility

The OECD’s fragility framework identifies 56 countries as fragile. It defines fragility as “the combination of exposure to risk and insufficient coping capacity of the state, system, and/or communities to manage, absorb, or mitigate those risks.”  It differentiates the levels and types of fragility across five dimensions: political, societal, economic, environmental, and security. This allows for the inclusion of Bangladesh, Kenya, and Cambodia alongside the far more fragile South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, and Syria. While still experimental, the OECD framework is broad enough to encompass countries which, while not necessarily low-income or conflict-affected, are contending with high levels of political, economic, societal, environmental, and economic fragility.

Toward a new consensus

The increasing demands posed by fragile states have cast light on the inadequacies of the international aid system to respond. The current system delivers a patchwork of disparate development projects, emergency services that last decades, and scattered technical advice in the face of systemic breakdowns in political legitimacy, markets, and service delivery, and in extreme cases, state failure.

To realize the internationally agreed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to “leave no one behind,” the international aid community must either forge consensus on systemic reforms to meet the challenges of fragile states, or resign itself to the dysfunctional status quo.

A new political consensus for putting fragility at the center of the global development agenda should focus at the outset on the three following points.

1. Mission
   Fragile states must aim to become resilient nations that can deliver development outcomes while continuously adapting to challenges and gradually overcoming the causes of fragility. Getting there requires focusing on three objectives: eradicating extreme poverty and promoting inclusive development and growth; identifying and dealing with risks and crisis from conflict, disaster, and destitution; and addressing the underlying causes of fragility stemming from broken social contracts, weak institutions, and societal divisions. Delivering on this in the face of weak institutions, entrenched political economies, and legacies of mistrust and exclusion is enormously challenging. To succeed, donors and other international partners must overhaul the aid system in line with promising new directions for adaptive development, fostering social capital, technological innovation, scaling operations, and improved country coordination.
2. Moving away from projects and stovepiped technical support
   There must be new terms of development cooperation that appreciate the magnitude of the challenges and commit to new ways of working. It requires a focus on structural challenges and building political settlements, social contracts, markets, and public administration. This does not mean international partners should play a directive role akin to the U.N.-run transitional administrations in Kosovo and Timor-Leste. Rather, they should encourage fragile governments to experiment, iterate, and adapt to complex challenges in line with emerging practice around problem-driven iterative adaptation.  The perverse result of aid conditionality has too often been institutions that look Western in form but are dysfunctional because they lack the advanced bureaucratic operating systems required for success—a condition called “isomorphic mimicry.”Instead, a “protected space” must be cultivated between governments and partners to encourage adaptation, accountability, and results without fear of violating rigid rules on corruption and compliance.   The World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law likens donor aid that hinders governments and societies from finding their own adaptive methods to a “curse.” The New Deal principle of using country systems as much as possible has often been a bridge too far for wary donors. The ultimate realization of this principle will require a significant shift in development cooperation toward function over form, allowing space for experimentation, failure, and adaptation.
3. Understanding context and complexity
   The dominant focus of international partners on sectoral advice and projects has rendered invisible the complexity and contextual variations of fragile states. A shift toward more systemic reforms will require efforts to make visible how complex systems behave and interact, along with a better understanding of the role of institutions in setting rules and governing behavior. Carrying out political economy assessments are critical for understanding patterns of exclusion, patronage, and clientelism. These should be incorporated into broader resilience assessments that identify the intensity and interaction of complex risks.Resilience assessments should map available capacities in the formal and informal sectors, with an outsized role for social capital.  The standard approach of trying to build human capital and infrastructure is necessary but not sufficient. It is critical to focus on strengthening social capital through efforts to strengthen norms, networks, and relationships within and between communities, as well as between communities and formal institutions. Social capital widens the pool of available capacities to deliver services, deal with risk and shocks, and helps address root causes by changing patterns of dialogue, cooperation, and inclusion.Understanding the composition, function, and incentives of public administration in fragile states is vital and should be a special focus of the World Bank’s new “Bureaucracy Lab,” an initiative to better understand the world’s public officials. Importantly, externally recommended reforms should be mindful of political economy factors. For example, when removing thousands of “ghost” employees from a fragile state’s bureaucracy, the possible consequences merit consideration. Were ghost employees a simple case of malfeasance or the way a political leader rewarded an influential patronage network or co-opted opponents to help stabilize the country? Technological advances, including mobile telephones, can advance the work of making contexts and complexity visible via crowdsourcing, satellite imagery, and big data.  These technologies help to gather data and analyze trends on extreme poverty, disaster and conflict, government performance, and public perceptions. Critically, these data and analysis must work with adaptive development approaches for real-time feedback, learning, and iteration instead of as snapshots for fixed project designs, log frames, and annual learning, and evaluation. Technological innovation, like bureaucratic reforms, must be politically sensitive and contribute to informed policy to support reforms and do no harm.

Adopt scaling-up approaches

The perceived wisdom is to keep projects in fragile states small and manageable and avoid trying to work at scale because of the higher risks involved. This makes sense for an aid system that largely works through short-term, one-off projects. Yet, scaling is arguably less risky than a project-based approach.  Done well, scaling requires greater investments in understanding contexts, mobilizing and blending resources, securing political authorization and popular support, and building the capacities of the private sector or government to deliver. The Basic Package of Health Services for Afghanistan  and the Afghanistan National Solidarity Program are leading examples of successful scaling amidst fragility.

Applying systematic methods for scaling can provide broader operational, political, economic, and social spaces for collaboration and adaptive development in ways that transcend the projects approach and which build social capital, meet widespread needs, and build resilience.

Establish country mechanisms to guide implementation and solve collective action problems

Country-led institutional frameworks and coordination mechanisms between the government and partners are vital. A significant barrier to the New Deal’s success is the lack of country coordination mechanisms to rally partners, mobilize resources, and move forward on a compact and “one plan.”  Somalia’s Compact Coordination Platform allowed the country to create a center of gravity for the government and partners to plan, troubleshoot, and implement together. Yet, unlike the humanitarian cluster system, a much-scrutinized operational doctrine, few lessons have been gleaned from past government-led coordination mechanisms for post-crisis development.

Members of the g7+ countries have extensive experience with these mechanisms that should be mined for purposes of learning, conceptual refinement, and contextual adaptation. These include mechanisms for post-crisis transition in Afghanistan, Haiti, South Sudan, Timor-Leste, and Liberia. Sierra Leone is currently experimenting with an ambitious institutional framework and coordinating mechanism for the SDGs and the New Deal.

The U.N. secretary-general’s report for the World Humanitarian Summit called for a country mechanism based on resilience principles. It entails detailed risk mapping to inform a comprehensive problem statement covering peace and security, the environment, and relief and development. From there, it organizes diverse partners in accordance with which capacities are best suited to address particular risks and deliver specific results. This proposal is bold and worth pursuing.

Committing to better designed- and managed- country coordination mechanisms and adaptive, iterative approaches to supporting fragile states would make for a step-change in achieving mission critical tasks in fragile contexts.

Next steps

A unique window exists to put fragility at the center of the global development agenda. The U.N. secretary-general is reforming the U.N.’s peace and security architecture and the U.N. development-system. In terms of the latter, an increasing focus on fragile contexts is already apparent through the work of United Nations Development Program, International Labor Organization, World Food Program, Food and Agriculture Organization, and International Fund for Agricultural Development. The World Humanitarian Summit committed to stronger links between the U.N. humanitarian entities and development agencies, a promise that will carry over into U.N. Secretary General António Guterres’ discussions of “cross-pillar” collaboration between the security, development, and human rights pillars.

The World Bank has expanded its fragility department and committed over half of the funds from the International Development Association, the World Bank’s fund for the poorest, to fragile situations. The OECD Development Assistance Committee has a central focus on fragility, supporting the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding and the g7+ group of fragile states. The Global Funds and regional banks, especially the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance have increased their focus and funding commitments to fragile contexts.  China, the EU, and the U.S. are all committed in principle to helping fragile states succeed, though their approaches are disparate.

The World Economic Forum has taken interest in fragile states over the past several years, convening a global council to explore public-private partnerships in these contexts. USAID has public-private partnerships in the majority of fragile states where it operates, with 10 or more public-private partnerships in half of these countries.

As these various institutions and partners work to advance the SDGs, there must be a collective recognition that fragile states are essential to reaching the finish line. The U.N. and World Bank, encouraged by member states, should lead a new consensus aimed at re-envisioning the international development system if we are to overcome the last mile toward ending extreme poverty. 

      

 

 

By Francis Mulangu

While 6 million Ghanaians (21 percent of the population) live in rural poverty, when it comes to food and nutrition security (FNS) the country performs relatively better than its African neighbors. For example, according to the Brookings Ending Rural Hunger database, only 4 percent of Ghanaians are likely to be exposed to undernourishment, compared to the region’s 20 percent. Only 51 percent of Ghanaians lack enough money to buy food, compared to 54 percent of people in the region. Average dietary energy supply adequacy, which is the dietary energy supply as a percentage of the average dietary energy requirement, is 142 percent compared to the African average of 114 percent. When it comes to malnutrition, Ghana also has lower rates of under-five wasting and stunting than the region as well (Figure 1). And on a global level, Ghana ranks 27 out of 115 developing countries when it comes to the calorie gap.

Figure 1. Select FNS indicators in Ghana and Africa

There are some indicators, though, in which Ghana performs poorly. For instance, Ghanaians get 66 percent of their calories from staples compared to 62 percent of Africans, signaling a poor diversity in diet. Anemia is another key FNS challenge for Ghana with performing worse than average, as 76.5 percent of children under five nationally have anemia (88 percent in the northern Ghana) compared to the sub-Saharan African average of 60 percent. Anemia in the early stages of life leads to severe negative consequences on development of children even after treatment. The result is a negative effect on human capital and, consequently, the future sustainability of economic growth.

While Ghana performs better than the African average on undernourishment, stunting, and wasting, concentrated pockets of these still exist in Northern Ghana. But when we compare Ghana to the African average, Ghana is in a much better position in relation to food and nutritional security.

Economic growth, but not equal and not in the agriculture sector

Buoyed by the rise in commodity prices throughout the past decade and half, a prosperous mining sector and the discovery of petroleum in 2007, economic growth in Ghana averaged 5.4 percent between 2000 and 2010 and grew to 7.1 percent between 2010 and 2016. During the same period, a 73 percent increase in per capita income has moved Ghana into the lower-middle-income country (LMIC) status. Moreover, the percentage of the population living below extreme poverty has fallen from about 48 percent in 1991 to 12 percent in 2012. These overall increases in per capita income, and its resulting poverty reduction, however, obscure the unequal sharing of the benefits of growth to those facing food and nutritional security challenges.

Evidence from developed countries, including in Asia and Latin America, strongly suggests that agriculture can be an engine of growth early in the development process and also an important force for poverty reduction and FNS. While agricultural growth has been the precursor to the acceleration of industrial growth in a number of emerging economies, in the case of Ghana (as well as most sub-Saharan countries), current agricultural productivity is low—partially contributing to the country’s remaining pockets of poor FNS outcomes. Despite the high percentage of households engaged in agriculture (Figure 2), productivity remains low. Adoption of inputs such as fertilizer, irrigation, and improved seeds remains low due to inefficiencies of output and input markets such as land, labor, credit, and insurance markets. Only 0.7 percent of land is equipped for irrigation, against 12 percent at the regional level and 29 percent at the developing world level. It has been shown elsewhere (such as in Sierra Leone) that alleviating these constraints could result in technology adoption that will improve FNS outcomes.

Figure 2: Percentage of households engaged in agriculture

Agriculture sector policies to address FNS

On the policy side, Ghana has strived to address FNS issues. On the larger scale, Ghana has implemented the Medium-Term Agriculture Sector Investment Plan (METASIP) 2011-2015, which seeks to enhance food security and emergency preparedness to transform the country’s agricultural sector. The METASIP aligns with the regional Maputo Declaration, in which countries agreed to allocate at least 10 percent of their national budget to the agricultural sector. METASIP includes a government allocation of at least 10 percent of the national budget, in conformity with the Maputo declaration. Already, a 2014 study on the perceived impact of METASIP found that the program had a positive impact on productivity improvement as access to fertilizer, seeds quality, and information on market conditions improved. However, challenges still exist: Study respondents highlighted challenges such as the poor adaptability of the machines to local conditions.

On a smaller scale, Ghana had put in place the block farms program, which aimed to improve food security through the use of science and technology. The program provided farmers with subsidized mechanization services and inputs. The program led to increased productivity in maize, rice, and soybean. By 2010, all 10 regions of Ghana were participating in this program, and more crops had been added, including sorghum, tomato, and onions. Another example of a small-scale program intervention is the fertilizer subsidy program of 2008-2016, which aimed to increase farmers’ fertilizer use through voucher programs, leading to increased fertilizer application rate.

A number of donors, such as the U.S., have supported the country’s efforts to address residual FNS concerns, especially in the north of Ghana where FNS conditions are poorest. One successful intervention, partially funded by Feed the Future, is the Home-Grown School Feeding Program (HGSFP). A randomized control trial of the program conducted by Partnership for Child Development  found that participation in agriculture increased by about 5 percent in HGSFP communities, the value of own food consumed increased for households in HGSFP communities by 1,729 Ghanaian cedi ($450), net enrollment at the kindergarten level increased by nearly 11 percent, and the probability of stunting among.

Ghana was also among the first six countries to benefit from the social protection “graduation program” funded by donors such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, which provided “ultra” poor households with a productive asset, training, regular coaching, access to savings, and consumption support. The intervention improved both household food consumption and food security with a positive rate of return of 133 percent.

Finding innovative financing and new resources for FNS as Ghana becomes middle income

Despite these successes, Ghana faces a new challenge: It must find innovative sources of finance to help support these types of programs as becoming a LMIC decreases its access to donor-funded FNS programs. Mobilizing internal resource will become a key tool for raising the necessary resources to meet FNS needs, and Ghana must redraft its aid management policy. In the case of Ghana,  extensive work has begun to merge in the area of restructuring the processes of the domestic tax divisions in an effort to maximize internal resources capture. But further work still needs to be done. Ghana needs to work with traditional FNS donor partners to provide clarity about their strategies, timeline, and the implications. Further question for consideration include: How will any phasing out be managed to ensure that development gain previously obtained through donor funds are sustained, particularly in the FNS sectors where donors have played a key role? Are there experiences with LMIC graduations in other continents that can guide Ghana’s transition?

Download the policy brief.

      

 

 

By David Batcheck

Assessment of students’ learning—gauging their capabilities—is part of the core of education. Assessment provides feedback to the system, the teacher, and the student about how educational goals are being achieved.

So assessment results have the power to optimize learning outcomes—the use of the results can inform all stakeholders about whether learning goals have been achieved, and if not, where attention needs to be focused.

In the past, assessment results have frequently been used for the purposes of designating some students as successful and others as failures. This approach is not consistent with Sustainable Development Goal 4, to “Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning.” We need assessment to support learning for all, not to withhold learning opportunities from some individuals.

Education systems have also frequently focused only on academic disciplines. In this 21st century, many countries have identified that they need to expand the horizons of their education provision such that students are equipped with a broad range of transferable skills that lie beyond the acquisition of knowledge or technical skills alone. This presents new challenges to education systems, not only in curriculum reform and identification of the pedagogical strategies most likely to support new visions, but also in approaches to assessment. It is essential that styles of assessment are aligned with the nature of the learning goals. New goals need new forms of assessment!

Optimizing Assessment for All (OAA) is a project of the Center for Universal Education at Brookings. OAA seeks to strengthen education systems’ capacity to integrate 21st century skills into their teaching and learning, using assessment as one important means of building that capacity. A central theme underlying the project is the need to shift minds toward the constructive use of assessment by all stakeholders.

OAA initiatives are designed to be implemented from two hubs—one based with the Network on Education Quality Monitoring in the Asia-Pacific (NEQMAP) in Asia, and the other with the Teaching and Learning Educators’ Network for Transformation (TALENT) in Africa. Based on regional convenings, countries will work collaboratively and with expert input to design and pilot classroom-based assessments of 21st century skills—closely aligned with curricular objectives. Development of the assessments with assessment teams and teachers is intended to enhance understanding of these skills to support teaching in the classroom. Importantly the information that is captured by the assessments should support instruction but also be aligned with system level assessment needs. The goal of the initiatives is to build a critical mass of assessment expertise on 21st century skills in the Asia and Africa regions.

      

 

 

By Dhruv Gandhi

The 2017 IMF Fiscal Monitor report addresses trends in income inequality, its impact on health and educational outcomes, and policy options to addresses those gaps. Unfortunately, sub-Saharan Africa faces tall obstacles when it comes to inequality of many kinds. As Figure 1 shows, the region had the second-highest average income inequality in 2015, which was only slightly lower than in 1985. To address this challenge, the report says that redistributive fiscal policies are often used to address disposable income inequalities through taxes and income-related transfers and market income inequalities through in-kind transfers such as spending on education and health care. In addition, based on country-specific conditions and with fiscal constraints in mind, the report highlights the possibility of a progressively implemented universal basic income program in developing countries that have large gaps in existing social safety net programs.

Figure 1. Average income inequality across regions and over time, 1985–2015

Inequality in Africa doesn’t just manifest in income: For example, as Figure 2 shows, globally, sub-Saharan Africa ranks last in equal access to education. According to the report, closing this educational gap as well as increasing quality for poorer students can reduce intergenerational income inequality. The report recommends focusing on expanding basic and secondary education along with a system of tertiary education that focuses on equalizing opportunity irrespective of financial ability to pay.

Figure 2. Inequality in access to education

Inequality in health coverage and outcomes are similar to those seen in education. The report shows that countries with greater inequities see worse health outcomes. For example, as seen in Figure 3, countries with the most health coverage inequality suffer from a lower average life expectancy. Notably, as also shown in Figure 3, sub-Saharan Africa in particular would accrue the largest gains by reducing disparities in health coverage. In addition, as the report highlights, there are several potential benefits from eliminating health coverage gaps, such as improvements in productivity, employment, and earnings. The report’s recommendations for decreasing health inequality include universal coverage of basic services and targeted subsidies for certain illnesses.

Figure 3. Basic health coverage inequality and health outcomes

      

 

 

By Anthony F. Pipa

As someone who worked for decades on poverty in the U.S. before focusing on international development, I find it worth exploring what lessons from the global experience might be relevant to today’s opioid crisis in the U.S.

The opioid crisis is one of the most urgent issues facing America today. Policymakers at multiple levels are making it a priority: President Trump has declared the epidemic a public health emergency, while Congress passed the comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act last year. Despite this attention, public health officials recently testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that the crisis is getting worse, not better.

In contrast, the U.S. has enjoyed much success over the past 15 years, on a bipartisan basis, addressing health challenges overseas. Its investments and initiatives have been highly effective in globally reducing child mortality, maternal mortality, malaria, and HIV/AIDS, and its leadership was critical in shutting down Ebola as the disease began to spin out of control in West Africa.

Development is a discipline, and when viewing the opioid epidemic through the lens of practitioners involved in these global efforts, the playbook is not a mystery—and raises the following questions:

What’s the goal?

Clear, time-bound goals based on rigorous analysis of the data are the cornerstone for mobilizing people, money, and action. Analyses of the opioid crisis are awash in statistics: a 493 percent increase in opioid addiction since 2010, a quadrupling of opioid-related deaths since 1999, maps of the breadth and geographic distribution of the epidemic.

Yet, there is no clear, serious articulation—backed up by evidence and analysis—of ambitious yet feasible reductions that the U.S. seeks to achieve, and by when. Why hasn’t the U.S. committed to a goal, such as a 50 percent reduction in addiction and overdoses within five years?

True, developing such measures is not an easy task, and requires informed debate among experts and leaders. There is not even good data or agreement about the extent to which current overdoses are related to prescription opioids. But until the U.S. commits to a clear definition of success, one with a basic level of consensus among key stakeholders, its efforts risk incoherence, and its ability to make swift and sufficient progress will be unnecessarily limited.

What’s the plan?

With a clear, measurable goal in mind, a strategy can then prioritize, sequence and integrate interventions—and even accelerate promising new innovations—for maximum impact. A list of 56 recommendations, the output of the presidential commission, does not a constitute a coherent plan.

The five-point strategy put forth by the Department of Health and Human Services provides more focus, but does not link estimated results to the interventions it proposes; nor does it explain why they were prioritized over others. 

Various trade-offs must be weighed. Some interventions might be deployed at scale more quickly; others might have been proven more effective, but cost more; still others might show great promise, but require more testing. It’s crucial to balance the known effects with the unknown, integrate and sequence efforts for maximum impact and commit to credible estimations of the outcomes expected, based on historical data and prior evaluations.

Who’s responsible and for what?

Clear goals and a plan provide the basis for mobilizing action. The president’s pick of Kellyanne Conway as opioid czar has attracted some criticism, but as Ron Klain proved during his management of the Ebola response, the central leader doesn’t have to be a substantive expert to be effective.

What she must do is leverage the authority and political capital of the White House, to coordinate internally and attract serious commitments from stakeholders who matter—key cabinet members, governors, pharmaceutical CEOs, hospitals CEOs, health-care organizations, health professionals, philanthropists, and community nonprofit leaders.

Addressing such a complex and multifaceted epidemic requires the contributions and actions of stakeholders to reinforce each other.

How will we know?

Transparent accountability, to track follow-through on those commitments and progress on ending the epidemic, is central to sustaining momentum over the time period necessary to achieve success. The public should easily be able to access understandable data that is regularly updated to view progress. Such transparency minimizes the guessing game of identifying who’s not keeping up their end of the bargain and what’s not working as planned, and it provides incentives for elevating and scaling what is.

Here is one example of how this has worked: In 2012, the U.S. and partners realized the global community was falling short of an agreed-upon goal under the U.N. to achieve a two-thirds reduction in unnecessary child deaths by 2015. Experts published key trend analyses in the Lancet, and a global coalition of governments, civil society organizations, multilateral agencies and businesses emerged to make new pledges and expand partnerships to accelerate progress. This Call to Action, convened by the U.S., India and Ethiopia in collaboration with the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), prioritized increased efforts in 24 countries that accounted for 80 percent of the under-age-five deaths at the time. It also focused on addressing the top causes that accounted for nearly 60 percent of deaths.

Impact was swift: Over the next two years, it was estimated that an additional 500,000 children’s lives were saved. A publicly accessible data dashboard is still available to view the most recent statistics by country.

Yes, there are substantive and contextual differences between this (and other global health crises) and the opioid epidemic in the U.S. The blueprint for a successful response, however, remains relevant. In fact, the opioid crisis demonstrates the applicability of the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to the U.S. and other developed countries. Prevention and treatment of substance abuse, including narcotics, is one of the targets under SDG 3. U.N. agencies and other multilateral entities have proven the value in driving social progress through this type of goal-setting and mobilization of stakeholders. Indeed, the U.S. has led efforts to hold global institutions to outcome-oriented standards in order to maximize its own return on investment. The country needs to do the same thing at home— across local, state, and federal governments.

To end the opioid epidemic, bipartisan agreement isn’t enough. Political attention isn’t enough. Good intentions aren’t enough. The lessons we’ve learned are clear:

Well-defined, time-bound and evidence-based goals provide the basis; tested and scalable interventions, combined with key innovations, provide the means; coordinated commitments and contributions from a wide array of stakeholders provide the muscle; and transparent reporting and easily accessible updates provide the measure.

Americans know how to “do” goals. President Kennedy practically invented the concept with the moonshot. It’s time to hold ourselves to the same measurable standards we ask of others. Our fellow citizens affected by this crisis deserve no less.

      

 

 

By Rebecca Winthrop

As 2017 comes to a close, we in the Center for Universal Education (CUE) have been reflecting on what a busy year it had been for us here at Brookings, for the global education community, and for the world. The role of education in helping individuals and societies adapt to rapid change and increasingly complex and interconnected problems—while always important—has taken on increasing relevance this year. We have been reminded of the wise words from the preamble to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) constitution so eloquently drafted some seven decades ago: “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.” With this in mind, we have pulled a selection of relevant research, reports, and events that capture the flavor of some of the conversations this year. These are a mix of large and small-scale efforts and work in and outside the education sector.

1Emerging attention on the intersection of girls’ education and climate change. Environmentalist Paul Hawken released his book Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, which proposes 100 proven solutions to global warming. Investing in family planning and girls’ education could result in a carbon reduction of 120 gigatons by 2050, a reduction higher than switching to solar energy or wind energy.

2Refugee education over the decades. Sarah Dryden-Peterson, CUE non-resident fellow, published a paper that traces the history of refugee education since World War II to understand how we got to this point of integration into national systems.

3For the first time, the World Bank’s annual flagship report was devoted to education. World Development Report 2018: LEARNING to Realize Education’s Promise explored how despite big global gains in access to education, many children are not learning the foundational and 21 century skills required to be successful.

4Accountability in education must start with governments. The 2017/8 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report examined the role of accountability in education and meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The report stresses that holding governments accountable is a shared responsibility among all stakeholders and looks at the different mechanisms in which to do so.

5Education faces two major problems: skills inequality and skills uncertainty. How can innovation help? In a report published this year, we examined the possibility of leapfrogging—rapidly accelerating educational progress to ensure that all young people develop the skills they need to thrive in a fast-changing world.

6Commitments and progress in early childhood development. The case for early investments in children has already been clear: it has large payoffs for society. The World Bank and UNICEF launched the Early Childhood Development Action Network (ECDAN) to help coordinate and accelerate commitments and investment in quality early childhood development (ECD). In Latin America, representatives from 11 countries and major development banks and institutions signed a policy declaration to advance the ECD agenda. In the U.S., Brookings colleagues published a report on the state of scientific knowledge on pre-kindergarten effects.

7Change is happening at a disorienting pace and our institutions can barely keep up. In March, we convened a meeting of top thought leaders in the fields of learning, innovation, and technology and asked them: how can we reach a more effective, holistic, and equitable education for every child in the world? We published the results of those discussions in a collection of essays entitled Meaningful education in times of uncertainty.

8New ventures for giving and financing education. A group of leading philanthropists, including Bill and Melinda Gates, Romesh and Kathy Wadhwani, Jeff Skoll, Richard Chandler, and the Rockefeller Foundation helped to form Co-Impact. The new “philanthropic collaborative for systems change” will invest an initial $500 million in education, health, and economic opportunity to improve underserved groups across the world. Another innovative financing mechanism for education programs, social and development impact bonds, are continuing to grow and we see promising two-year results for the first development impact bond.

9The transformation of education systems to develop essential 21 century skills. In order to be effective, the full breadth of skills, from literacy and numeracy to creativity, collaboration, and problem solving, must be cultivated across age groups and learning environments, including school, community, home, and society at large. In April, we explored this theme at our annual research and policy symposium. An analysis of country education systems found that 70 percent of 155 countries aspire to develop breadth of skills, marking a major shift in global education.

10Moving beyond what to deliver to how to deliver. In May 2017, the Education Commission held a workshop to introduce its delivery approach to 12 African countries to help participants commit to and focus on problem solving and implementation of programs. CUE’s Millions Learning project is also beginning to develop real-time scaling labs to provide insights and guidance to practitioners as they bring programs to scale.

      

 

 

By Eyerusalem Siba, Biruk Tekle

      

 

 

By Dhruv Gandhi

On Thursday, January 11, the Africa Growth Initiative at Brookings launched its annual Foresight Africa report, focusing on key priorities for the region for the upcoming year. In chapter 3, Broadening the benefits of growth: No one left behind, scholars evaluate the region’s performance in improving human development outcomes and discuss issues like migration and food security. 

In his essay, Brookings Fellow Landry Signé discusses the relationship between economic growth and poverty reduction highlighting three key challenges: economic growth without adequate job creation, rapid population growth, and the lack of pro-poor government interventions. As Figure 1 shows below, half of Africa’s top 10 economic outperformers from 2000 to 2015 were oil-exporting countries where growth was mostly driven by natural resource exports.

There is significant variation in poverty reduction with only two of the 10 economic outperformers also excelling in poverty reduction. Based on current projections, the region is not on track to end poverty by 2030 (Goal 1 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)). In his Foresight Africa viewpoint, Shanta Devarajan argues that universal basic income programs in oil-exporting countries have the potential to improve public spending outcomes through increased transparency and civic participation.

The region is falling behind on other Sustainable Development Goals as well. Figure 2, shows that only two countries in sub-Saharan Africa are on track to reduce maternal mortality to below 70 deaths per 100,000 live births by 2030 (part of SDG 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages).

To catch up and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, Paul Polman and Mark Malloch-Brown argue in their viewpoint (page 46) that, “It is time for Africa’s business community to embrace the SDGs as a unique opportunity to deliver the growth the continent so desperately needs.”

      

 

 

By Homi Kharas, Lorenz Noe

In Angus Deaton’s January 24 New York Times op-ed, The U.S. Can No Longer Hide From Its Deep Poverty Problem, the Nobel Prize winning economist rightly pointed to the scourge of absolute poverty in many parts of the United States. He also cited new evidence that absolute poverty standards should be adjusted according to need, as well as to take into account price differences across countries. Many have already responded to technical issues as to whether being poor in the U.S. is fundamentally different from being poor in developing countries, and the difficulty with comparing income and consumption data.

The controversial part of Deaton’s article is his conjecture that “for years…the needs of poor Americans (or poor Europeans) have received little priority relative to the needs of poor Africans or Asians.” The implication, drawn from his own personal experience with giving, is that funds should be reallocated from international aid (known as official development assistance or ODA) toward meeting urgent domestic needs.

Fundamentally, Deaton’s conjecture merits empirical analysis. Do countries that spend more on their own domestic social priorities spend less on ODA? We find the opposite. The chart below maps ODA as a percent of GDP against social expenditure as a percent of GDP for OECD countries (including the U.S.) from 2000 to 2016. There is a clear positive slope to Figure 1. Countries that spend more domestically also spend more on foreign aid. The findings also hold when mapping aid against spending overall, net social expenditure, and average spending levels across time.

Figure 1: Countries that spend more domestically also spend more on foreign aid

Sources: Net ODA Disbursements https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=TABLE1; GDP, current US $ https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD; Gross Social Expenditure https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=SOCX_AGG

While we may not be able to pinpoint why certain countries tend to be generous both at home and abroad, what we do know is that spending money on poverty programs, whether domestic or international, requires an empathy and understanding that public resources are well spent on such activities. The arguments underlying these programs therefore apply equally to all kinds of social spending.

Furthermore, one must consider the proportional trade-offs between domestic social spending and international aid. Our colleague and Senior Fellow Tony Pipa tweeted, “The U.S. has enough resources to address both domestic and global poverty.” According to OECD data, the average developed country spends 60 times as much on domestic social spending as on aid. So halving aid would still not yield enough money to increase domestic social spending by even 1 percent.

The real constraint on both domestic social spending and aid is political will, not finance. Policymakers, as well as civil society, need to look hard at the evidence of impact and then play a part in ensuring that the political system delivers money to programs that reduce poverty at home and abroad.

Both aid and domestic social spending should be seen as investments that yield considerable social returns, but both are more often than not characterized as charitable giveaways with no benefit to the rest of society. Breaking this mindset is one the challenges facing the internationally agreed-upon Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with their emphasis on “leave no one behind.”

The SDGs are universal, and now, thanks to Deaton and others studying poverty in rich countries, we have evidence that they are as relevant in developed as in developing countries.

Rather than talking about the relative priority of spending on poor Americans versus poor Africans, Deaton should join the effort to build a global movement where country governments and social leaders, acting individually and together, promote activities where there is evidence of sustainable development outcomes, both domestically and internationally.

      

 

 

By Emily Gustafsson-Wright

Last Thursday morning, at a dark, early-morning hour, with my high-security badge securely hung from my neck, I cautiously trod along the slippery streets of Davos, Switzerland to participate in events at the 2018 World Economic Forum. This year, 2,500 of the world’s most powerful people gathered in this alpine town, with the aim of “Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World”. Businesswomen and businessmen, world leaders, celebrities, entrepreneurs, the media, and academics like myself, met to discuss the pressing issues of today, including poverty, equality, climate change, terrorism, trade, and the refugee crises.

One of the big questions was how to fill the estimated $2.5 to 3 trillion annual investment gap needed to fulfill the 17 ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), their 169 targets, and 230 indicators of success. Mind you, beyond finding the needed trillions of dollars, achieving these goals is no small feat. Goal 3, for example, aims to end preventable deaths of newborns and children under age 5. In the current scenario, 30 million newborns are expected to die between now and 2030. Goal 4, to ensure inclusive and quality education for all, is also a mighty task—given that, as things stand now, 263 million children and youth are out of school and the number is expected to grow. It will take a lot more than only money to address these issues.

Enter innovative financing for development. Innovative finance intends to both increase resources and improve the use of existing resources. One particular form of innovative finance, payment by results, or results-based financing, seeks to create incentives to achieve critical social outcomes by only paying when results are achieved. For over a decade, multilateral and bilateral donors have used variations of these tools as a way to bring transparency to development aid, with the end goal of improving more lives. The U.K.’s Department for International Development (DFID), for example, established the Global Partnership for Output-based Aid (GPOBA) in 2003 as a multi-donor trust fund administered by the World Bank, with the mandate of exploring output-based aid (OBA) projects across seven sectors. In addition, two other trust funds at the World Bank—focused on education and health—also use payment by results, as does the World Bank’s Program-for-Results (PforR) financing instrument.

But in recent years a new form of payment by results has come to the development stage and to this year’s discussions at Davos. Social and development impact bonds (SIBs and DIBs) draw on elements of impact investing or blended finance, as well as public-private partnerships and allow outcome funders (governments in SIBs and a third party, such as a donor agency or foundations, in DIBs) to pay directly for the achievement of outputs or outcomes, rather than for inputs or compliant behavior. They differ from traditional payment by results in that investors not only provide the upfront risk capital with an opportunity for return, but they also can play a critical role in helping to improve the system of service delivery by bringing private sector discipline into practices of monitoring and performance management. As of January 1, 2018, 108 impact bonds had been contracted across 25 countries, six of which are in developing countries.

Donor agencies like the World Bank, DFID, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) have started to tread into this new territory. In Davos, I had the pleasure of moderating an event on the recently launched Utkrisht development impact bond (DIB) to tackle maternal and child mortality in Rajasthan, India. USAID Administrator Mark Green, who provided the keynote remarks, highlighted USAID’s commitment to using “new tools, partnerships and innovation” to address the SDGs, including dedicating $8 million in outcome funding to save over 600,000 lives. He also noted the potential for the model to bring “collaboration, co-financing, and co-designing” and the fact that taxpayers only pay when success has been achieved. Beyond this impact bond, the agency, through their Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) program, has used outcome-based financing to help households graduate out of poverty in Kenya and Uganda.

In another Davos gathering on development finance, heads of the major global donor institutions, ministers from developing countries, and business executives discussed bringing in more private capital and using new tools to spend resources more effectively. Mauricio Cardenas, Minister of Finance of Colombia, highlighted a recently launched social impact bond in his country, aimed at increasing employment among marginalized individuals. In this Colombian SIB, the first launched in a developing country, upfront risk capital is provided by local impact investors, who receive outcome payments from the Colombian government and the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs. This impact bond is in partnership with the IDB, which has taken a leadership role in the development of several impact bonds across Latin America. Though yet to be launched, the World Bank has also ventured into the world of impact bonds: one project aims to improve youth employability in the West Bank and Gaza, a second targets pre-term or low-birth-weight newborns in Cameroon, and a third for early childhood development in Uzbekistan. DFID is acting as the outcome funder in two of the five contracted DIBs so far, jointly with USAID in the project mentioned above in Kenya and Uganda, as well as an impact bond aimed at improving the lives of individuals injured in conflict (Nigeria, Mali, and the Democratic Republic of Congo) through adequate physical rehabilitation. Further discussions around the development of outcome funds or donor funds for specific sectors, such as education, are also underway among multiple donor agencies and foundations.

So what’s the big deal with these impact bonds? Are they just the flavor of the year? Perhaps there is indeed a bit of Kool-Aid drinking here. The idea of private capital and blended finance raises excitement about the possibility of filling that enormous financing gap. Based on our exploration of this tool over the last four years, however, we think there is something else there. It is about changing the entire system so that it works more effectively by investing in prevention, incentivizing collaboration, building a culture of monitoring and evaluation to drive performance management, and ultimately keeping everyone’s eye on the ball: focusing on the achievement of outcomes. These elements have the potential to truly make a dent in the SDGs by empowering countries themselves to lift themselves out of poverty and eventually ending the need for development assistance at all. For this to happen, however, domestic governments, national and subnational, must be an integral part of these new outcome-based financing arrangements.

      

 

 

By Geoffrey Gertz, Homi Kharas

The past 15 years saw the most rapid decline in global poverty ever, with the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) of halving the global poverty rate reached several years ahead of schedule. Building on this, governments around the world committed to a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including ending extreme poverty everywhere by 2030.

The pathway to achieving the SDGs will be qualitatively different from that which worked for the MDGs. In the MDG era, large, rapidly growing economies—including China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Ethiopia—drove development advances. Indeed, the world met the poverty MDG despite the fact that many of the poorest countries made little to no progress. Success during the SDG era, in contrast, depends precisely on what happens in these poorest countries. To achieve the goal of ending extreme poverty everywhere, we need a strategy that ensures no country is left behind.

This paper outlines such a strategy. First, it identifies those countries most at risk of being left behind: places we refer to as Severely Off Track Countries (SOTCs). Second, it diagnoses four core obstacles to development in these countries: low government effectiveness, weak private sector, conflict and violence, and natural hazards and environmental risks. Third, it suggests three ways in which partner country governments and donors need to adapt their standard practices to help countries get on track to ending poverty.

Identifying severely off track countries

To determine which countries are least likely to end extreme poverty by 2030, we project poverty rates for 195 countries around the world using the poverty line of $1.90 a day in 2011 purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. Based on current trajectories, 31 countries will have extreme poverty headcount ratios of at least 20 percent in 2030, our threshold for identification of SOTCs (see Figure A1). This group includes countries where poverty is falling, but from extremely high initial levels, as well as countries with moderate poverty but who are expected to make only minimal progress in coming years. We estimate that, by 2030, four out of every five people living in extreme poverty will be in the 31 SOTCs.

Obstacles to development in SOTCs

Are there common development challenges among SOTCs? Of the 31 countries, 24 are on either one or both of the World Bank’s Fragile States list and the Fund for Peace’s Fragile States Index. Yet the term “fragility” encapsulates many different concepts and masks important variation across countries. For this reason, rather than focusing on fragility, we look at four underlying obstacles to development that contribute to persistent poverty in SOTCs.

• Low government effectiveness: 16 of the SOTCs have low government effectiveness, defined as the government’s inability to administer and enforce rules and deliver services. Countries with low government effectiveness are unable to implement the policies that they have agreed to in principle; their bureaucracies are rife with absenteeism and corruption, and they struggle to provide basic services.
• Weak private sector: 22 of the SOTCs have weak private sectors, where firms face significant obstacles to doing business, resulting in limited domestic and foreign investment. While there are often potentially profitable opportunities for the private sector even in very poor countries—in sectors including but not limited to natural resources—a series of market and government failures may make it difficult to realize these opportunities or translate them into financial gain for the investor.
• Conflict and violence: 12 SOTCs have high levels of conflict and violence. Organized violence often occurs in repeated cycles and at times spills across borders, disrupting development, destroying infrastructure, and breaking down social trust. Given the high costs of violence—in human, economic, and social terms—supporting conflict prevention is often a sound investment for both governments and donors.
• Natural hazards and environmental risks: Six SOTCs have significant natural hazards and environmental risks. Those living in poverty are often most vulnerable to natural disasters; they are more likely to live in risky areas such as alongside rivers and floodplains, and lack access to social services, infrastructure, and political processes that could mitigate or help them adapt to hazards. Countries with high risks of natural hazards face a dual challenge: enhancing resilience before disasters hit and improving humanitarian responses in the aftermath of events.

Action plans for SOTCs

Our analysis suggests almost all SOTCs (28 of the 31) have significant challenges in at least one of these four areas, and 18 in multiple areas. To avoid being trapped in cycles where short-term success against one obstacle is offset by relapses in another, SOTCs must progress along a broad front. Given the scope of this challenge, the only way to achieve sustained development is through partnerships between SOTC governments and the international community. Working together, donors and SOTC governments can develop action plans for getting countries back on track to end extreme poverty.

Yet current international assistance to SOTCs is not commensurate with the scale of their development needs, nor is it designed to maximize effectiveness. SOTCs received 23 percent of global country programmable aid in 2015—a relatively small share when set against our projection that 80 percent of the world’s extreme poor will live in these countries by 2030. On average, per capita aid is about the same in SOTCs as other countries, but considering the far larger development needs and lower scope for mobilizing non-aid resources (domestic and foreign), this leaves SOTCs at a financial disadvantage. Moreover, while some SOTCs are “donor darlings,” others are “donor orphans,” largely neglected by the international community.

Nevertheless, aid-financed projects in SOTCs appear to be about as successful as projects in other countries. This suggests it is not the case that it is simply too difficult to provide effective international assistance in these challenging contexts. Yet there is a paradox between this project-level success at the micro level and country-level stagnation at the macro level: successful projects are not translating into sustained, broader development progress. We suggest three ways donors and governments should change their practices in SOTCs to maximize development effectiveness:

• Reimagine scaling up. If a development intervention is financially profitable, market forces can be used to generate scale. If it aligns with a government’s mandate and interests, the government can roll out a program at scale by replicating across local, provincial, and national bureaucracies. In SOTCs, however, neither the market nor the bureaucracy pathway is reliable. Private markets are often shallow and inefficient, and government bureaucracies are under-skilled and ineffective. This means donors and governments must reimagine how to scale up successful interventions, including through lowering transaction costs for private investment, supporting domestic resource mobilization and institutional capacity building, and experimenting with how to integrate successful local programs into a national network.
• Redefine country ownership. The New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States, signed in 2011 by several endorsing organizations as well as many countries, urged donors to partner more closely with recipient governments and work through their country systems whenever possible, even in difficult contexts. Partner countries in turn promised to strengthen their systems and build better state capabilities. In practice, however, donors have been reluctant to use country systems that they view as corrupt or inefficient, while partner countries’ efforts to improve capacity have fallen short. This partly explains why the New Deal has achieved only modest take-up to date and why aid to fragile states has been falling. To overcome this binary choice between (perceived) inefficient reliance on country systems versus bypassing government systems altogether, donors should experiment with new forms of country ownership. For instance, in the transition period following Liberia’s civil war, donors partnered with Liberia’s government through the Governance and Economic Management Assistance Program (GEMAP), an innovative model where donors and government officials shared responsibility and oversight for improving core government functions. Similar compact-based approaches might be applicable in other SOTCs.
• Rethink results-focused metrics. Over the past decade, international development agencies have embraced monitoring and evaluation frameworks that emphasize measurable, time-based metrics to track success and improve accountability. While this more rigorous approach to evaluation has produced many benefits, it can backfire in SOTCs, where development progress is often non-linear, success takes decades, and it is impossible to define interim benchmarks precisely based on international best practices. Rather than evaluating projects against a predetermined set of time-based metrics, donors should consider granting greater autonomy to in-country offices, allowing them the flexibility to respond to changing circumstances and tailor their work to specific local contexts. Relatedly, donors should review their risk management strategies for SOTCs and make them less risk averse. Given the scale of the development challenge in SOTCs and the need to experiment with new approaches, some setbacks and failures are to be expected; donors should adjust their internal policies to allow for this.

conclusions

The world is shifting from an era where poverty was concentrated in large, rapidly growing economies to an era where poverty will increasingly be concentrated in a number of smaller economies facing deeper structural challenges. This shift has important implications for international development prospects, as well as for strategies to accelerate progress on the SDGs. SOTCs are now the heart of the development challenge, and should be the focus of the international community’s attention.

The good news is that micro evidence—from both public sector aid projects and private sector investments—suggest development interventions in these contexts can be successful and profitable, just as they are in other developing countries. The challenge, for both donors and governments, is how to move from individual successful projects to sustained countrywide progress, given the significant development obstacles in SOTCs. This is arguably the most urgent question in development today. This paper has outlined some principles to guide strategies for ending poverty in SOTCs, but much more research—particularly at the country level, adapted to local contexts and reflective of country-specific constraints and opportunities—is needed to develop actionable country plans.

      

 

 

By Rebecca Winthrop

Last week, amid growing movements towards isolationism throughout the world, the global education community doubled down on collaboration and partnerships across borders. From Lyon, France, where I attended a gathering spearheaded by Ashoka of education innovators and social entrepreneurs from 44 countries to Dakar, Senegal where the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) convened over 100 ministers from a diverse array of countries, the importance of working together to improve education was the theme of the day.

At the grassroots level, “education change leaders”, as Ashoka refers to them, sought to find new ways for innovators to connect with each other, share learning, and align around a shared vision of supporting holistic education. The tenor of the session was informal—among the several hundred people attending on the first day I only spotted three men with ties, one of them a bow tie donned more for fashion than formality. The conversation placed a premium on developing relationships, networks, and collaborations across countries, actors, and themes.

Education innovators displayed interest in being part of a more organized bottom-up movement that actively facilitated collaboration around the topics of parental engagement, demand for education reform, project-based learning approaches, and leveraging media to education change. Examples included: school leaders working with troubled youth, meditation gurus hoping to support schools in cultivating mindfulness, and filmmakers with a desire to galvanize parent activism. Given our recent research on education innovations and the finding that there is limited connection between innovation spotters (i.e., organizations who are scanning the landscape of innovative programs, schools, policies, approaches, and tools), this type of network building seems to be an important next step for the education innovation community.

At a higher level, policymakers from around the globe descended on Dakar from February 1-2, with the goal of refilling the coffers of GPE—which hosts the world’s global fund for education and aligns partners behind shared plans for improving education in low-income countries. With over a thousand people, and where almost all men wore ties, the conference was a mixture of short thematic presentations, networking, and formal announcements outlining how governments pledged to work jointly together to support and fund education. Jointly hosted by President Macron of France and President Sall of Senegal, and with the attendance of nearly ten heads of state and a plethora of ministers representing departments of education, state, development, labor or social welfare, the conference demonstrated that the education sector is being given greater attention among political leaders across the globe.

Historically, GPE, and the education sector more broadly, has struggled to attract the kinds of political attention that equally important “sister sectors”, such as global health, have received. Four years ago, GPE’s 2014 Replenishment Conference had no heads of state in attendance and a much smaller number of government ministers. However, since that time, there has been an increasing drumbeat globally on the importance of education. We have seen Ban Ki Moon’s Global Education First Initiative, the appointment of the first U.N. Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown, and global thought leaders engaged in the recent high-level, Norway-sponsored Education Commission. Last week’s replenishment conference demonstrates that education as a sector, and with GPE as a platform for collaboration, has indeed arrived on the political scene. Delegates from Argentina, the host of the next G-20, attended with hope to seamlessly build off the Dakar conference and include an increased focus on education in the 2018 G-20 meetings.

At the conference, donors committed $2.3 billion over three years, a 75 percent increase over the $1.3 billion that has been contributed in the previous three years. But this number is still far from the $3.1 billion that was desired. The target itself is well below the approximately $2 billion a year that other global funds raise and certainly well below the $39 billion annually that UNESCO estimates is needed to give every child in a low- and middle-income country a quality education—all of which are peanuts compared to the dollars circulating in a $75 trillion global economy.

However, the political engagement in the shared effort of supporting education for the world’s poorest countries is a good sign that increased collaboration on education just may bear the fruits of the kind of change—from top to bottom—that we need in education. Change that will enable the 264 million children who are out of primary and secondary school, and the millions of children who are in school and not learning well, to access a quality education. Certainly, many of the African delegates at the GPE conference are looking to each other to carry this momentum forward. Pan-African collaboration was a theme voiced by political leaders and advocates alike. President Akufo-Addo of Ghana argued that Africa is the richest continent with the youngest population and the lowest standards of living and education is the only solution to this conundrum—something that the countries in Africa could work together to address if they collectively cracked down on the billions of dollars that flee the continent illicitly.

Answering the call for pan-African collaboration, President Sall announced that Senegal would be the first African country contributing to GPE’s fund, donating $2 million, which presumably will help GPE support less fortunate neighbors. Ultimately, Youssou N’Dour, the beloved Senegalese musician and activist, summed it up when serenading the conference: “Africa, you can ask for help, but first let us try ourselves.”

      

 

 

By Molli Ferrarello

Thomas Barrett is a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Global Economy Development program at the Brookings Institution. His priority areas of focus are infrastructure and development finance; collaboration between the European Institutions, the multilateral development banks (MDBs) and the private sector.

Mr. Barrett is currently Chairman of the OECD Infrastructure Forum. Until May 2017, he was the Permanent Representative of the European Investment Bank and Minister of the European Union Delegation to the United States. In that capacity, he was Co-Director of the 2017 Global Infrastructure Forum organized by EIB and IDB on behalf of the World Bank; the African, Asian and Islamic Development Banks as well as EBRD, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and The New Development Bank which, together, through their increased collaboration in recent years, have framed the work program and guided the significant progress of the MDBs with Member State organizations including the G-7 and G-20 as well as the U.N. and the OECD;  think tanks, and the private sector.

Prior to taking up his position in Washington, Mr. Barrett had a long standing career at the European Investment Bank that included leading the substantial scaling up of private sector risk sharing finance for investment in economic infrastructure and innovation. He also led the establishment and chaired the European PPP Expertise Centre, the joint platform, of the EU 28 Member States for the development and implementation of Public Private Partnerships.

In recent years, Mr. Barrett was EIB Director for Risk Sharing Finance. He also led the integration of the EIB Advisory Services in which capacity he worked closely with the European Commission; Member States; public and private financial institutions and investors to ensure the dissemination of financial and risk sharing expertise in support of public policy objectives such as climate change; SDGs, and job creation.

Through these different positions, Mr. Barrett has had long standing involvement in creating synergies and a greater alignment between the public and private sectors in pursuit of increased investment in infrastructure and risk sharing innovation. Mr. Barrett has been an active representative and communicator on behalf of the European and MDB institutions in national and international fora. He completed his undergraduate studies at the National University of Ireland in Cork and his graduate education at INSEAD in France.

      

 

 

By Anthony F. Pipa

A few weeks ago, Duke Professor Indermit Gill prophesied in a Brookings blog post that 2018 will herald the end of aid just as we hosted a roundtable of experts from civil society, multilateral institutions, and former government officials with Charlotte Petri Gornitzka, chair of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC), the group of high-income countries that provide that aid.

The DAC, the arbiter and guardian of official development assistance (ODA), is increasingly at risk of obsolescence. Even as levels of ODA have continued to increase—it reached a new annual peak of $142.6 billion in 2016—that assistance makes up an ever-smaller proportion, now less than 10 percent, of the financial flows into developing countries. Aid has become a victim of its own success in creating the environment for other types of investment.

In recent years, the DAC has been bogged down in technical disputes over its accounting, while overtaken in prominence by more visible, inclusive forms of global cooperation, such as the creation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under the umbrella of the United Nations.

Chair Petri Gornitzka has laid out a reform agenda to adapt the committee to current global realities. President Donald Trump’s remarks from his recent State of the Union address, in which he proposed legislation to link U.S. foreign assistance to whether countries vote with the U.S. at the U.N., demonstrates the intensity of the headwinds. Aid is under pressure—from within as much as from without—with prominent DAC donors either feeling tapped out (even if they have formidable constituencies for providing aid) or testing the limits of the aid effectiveness principles that serve as the DAC’s cornerstone.

Our roundtable discussion, however, highlighted that an uncertain environment and even lack of consensus provides the DAC a basis for renewal. Its core constituency are the development ministers of OECD countries, political leaders who would benefit from a safe space to strengthen the case to their publics and political masters regarding the importance of investing in global development and coordinating their action to maximize returns.

The development narrative is practically begging for an update to make it relevant in the current political context. Even the words matter: Most non-experts would have trouble explaining what is meant by “development cooperation,” the term at the heart of how the DAC describes its primary preoccupation.

As an example, both Ambassador Mark Green, the administrator of U.S. Agency for International Development, and Penny Mordaunt, the United Kingdom secretary of state for development, are emphasizing that successful aid should lead to its own demise, touting approaches that would position recipient countries to shoulder an increasing share of responsibility over time.

Putting this idea of transition at the center of their strategies has the potential for deepening and sharpening development theory, practice, and impact—or being used disingenuously as an excuse for slashing budgets. The DAC offers a frank, political forum to get it right.

The DAC is also well-positioned to provide leadership in shepherding the shift from development aid to development finance, the much broader array of tools and capital that includes both public and private resources that will be necessary to achieve the scale of the SDGs.

The DAC’s concern about standardizing measurement and ensuring that the accounting is credible is well-placed, as donors are making claims about public resources unleashing private investment as they seek as much political credit as possible. To many outside observers, DAC members are twisting themselves into a pretzel, trying to find ways to make their aggregate numbers look good. It begs the question: How is all this financial innovation addressing market failures and benefiting the poorest?

Spending so much time trying to account favorably for the inputs blurs the focus. One of the DAC’s comparative advantages is (or ought to be) a central emphasis on development outcomes and effectiveness, including the key ingredients that make its development agenda so powerful. The DAC’s agenda is grounded in the OECD’s roots in promoting democratic institutions, well-being, and human rights. It was a critical step forward to have such values integrated into the new global consensus on development, evidenced, for example, by SDG 5 on gender equality and SDG 16 on peace, justice, and strong institutions.

Such a central focus on sustained and sustainable development impact, and the values that undergird it, should continue to set the DAC apart. Its leadership can demonstrate the value-add of development assistance provided by donors that uphold democratic principles, human rights, transparency, and accountability as their guide.

The DAC, as a closed club of developed countries, has struggled with the question of how best to open up or include new actors such as South-South providers (middle-income countries helping their counterparts) and non-DAC donors, especially China, which will invest trillions in countries throughout Asia and Africa through its One Belt, One Road initiative. However, perhaps that’s the wrong question—it may be more beneficial to reinforce the unique advantages of its approach and draw distinctions with the alternatives.

This summer will mark the 50th anniversary of Tidewater, the annual off-the-record retreat of DAC development ministers, so-named because the initial gathering was hosted by the U.S. at the Tidewater Inn on the eastern shore of Maryland. It will be an important opportunity for the members to renew and elevate the unique political leadership that the DAC can provide in advancing the development enterprise and achieving the SDGs. The DAC has too much to offer for this particular Tidewater gathering to lead to a valedictory.

      

 

 

By Geoffrey Gertz, Homi Kharas

Over the past two decades, the world has been living through the most dramatic decline in global poverty ever. Since 2000, while global population has increased by 1.4 billion people, the number of people living in extreme poverty dropped by about 1 billion. This remarkable success has brought a goal long considered a pipedream into view: the end of extreme poverty. Three years ago, governments from around the world committed to eliminate extreme poverty by 2030, as the first of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

Based on a simple extrapolation of past progress, this goal seems easily attainable: Currently about 8 percent of the world’s population lives in extreme poverty, and over the last 20 years that figure has been dropping by roughly one percentage point a year. Yet such back-of-the-envelope calculations obscure the fact that the nature of the fight against poverty is quickly changing. Back in 2000, the top 10 countries ranked by the largest populations in extreme poverty—collectively accounting for over three-quarters of global poverty—were China, India, Nigeria, Indonesia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. Between 2000 and 2015, 7 of these 10 countries cut their poverty headcount ratios by at least 70 percent (all but the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, and Tanzania). This is what drove the global poverty rate down by a percentage point a year.

But as of 2018, many of these countries have already nearly eliminated extreme poverty, and thus have little impact on global aggregate figures. Today, extreme poverty is increasingly concentrated in a set of countries that have achieved only limited development success in recent decades, and whose prospects for rapid growth appear slim.

In a new report, we identify the countries least likely to achieve the end of extreme poverty by 2030. We find there are 31 countries that are projected to have poverty headcount ratios of at least 20 percent in 2030. We refer to these places as severely off track countries (SOTCs). Their poverty rates are decreasing very slowly, if at all; we estimate that by 2030, 4 out of 5 people living in extreme poverty will be in these 31 countries. Thus, the advances and setbacks of these countries will determine global success in achieving SDG 1.

Figure 1: Severely off track countries

Note: The 31 severely off track countries are Afghanistan; Angola; Benin; Burundi; Central African Republic; Chad; Democratic Republic of Congo; Equatorial Guinea; Eritrea; Gambia; Guinea-Bissau; Lesotho; Liberia; Madagascar; Malawi; Mali; Mozambique; Niger; Nigeria; North Korea; Papua New Guinea; Republic of Congo; Solomon Islands; Somalia; South Sudan; Swaziland; Timor-Leste; Togo; Yemen; Zambia; and Zimbabwe.

How does this new grouping of SOTCs compare to existing lists of fragile states? To be sure, there is considerable overlap: 24 of the 31 SOTCs appear on either or both of the World Bank and Fund for Peace lists of fragile states. Yet, we have expressly avoided focusing on “fragility” as a concept, as the term has multiple and inconsistent meanings in the development community. For some people, fragility is about violence and conflict; for others, it is about government capacity; while for others, it is about places with high political instability and uncertainty, where the risks of a coup are high.

Our list of SOTCs is not defined by any such diagnostic of the sources of development challenges, but rather by one specific development outcome: a country’s ability to ensure its population can escape extreme poverty over the medium term. Indeed, as we show, while there are several challenges that are common among many SOTCs, each faces its own particular mix of obstacles and binding constraints to sustainable development. Notably, not all are home to significant conflict, violence, or any imminent threats of political instability; in fact, many have seen little political or economic change in decades.

The SOTCs include both “donor darlings”—countries where Western aid agencies are eager to engage—and “donor orphans”—countries largely neglected by the international community. Overall, however, international support to SOTCs has been modest; today less than a quarter of total programmable aid committed by OECD donors is allocated to SOTCs. Given that these countries are the frontline of ending extreme poverty around the world, aid agencies may want to consider reorienting their budgets to focus more directly on SOTCs.

One reason aid agencies might be reluctant to focus on SOTCs is a belief that development interventions in these risky environments are simply too difficult to accomplish, and thus that many attempted projects will end in failure. Yet, at least based on available data from World Bank project evaluations, this does not appear to be the case: While a decade ago there was a noticeable gap in the share of projects rated successful between SOTCs and other countries, in recent years that gap has narrowed considerably. Today, on average, development interventions in SOTCs are almost as likely to achieve their stated objectives as projects in other countries.

Figure 2: The gap in project evaluations scores between SOTCs and other countries has narrowed

Yet, this does not imply that aid agencies should simply proceed with a business-as-usual approach to their work in SOTCs. While individual projects may be successful in SOTCs, these projects often struggle to have impact at scale. Indeed, the process of scaling up—expanding and replicating successful interventions across space and time—is likely to be particularly difficult in SOTCs. The two most common pathways for scaling up development interventions are through the market or through government bureaucracies. In SOTCs, however, neither the market nor the bureaucracy are reliable pathways. Private markets are often shallow and inefficient, and government bureaucracies are under-skilled and ineffective. Identifying new strategies to move from successful individual projects to transformative countrywide progress in SOTCs is arguably the most important question in development today.

While the scale of challenges facing SOTCs is daunting, history also shows us that progress is possible. Indeed, if we had set about identifying a list of severely off track countries 20 years ago, it likely would have included two countries that have achieved dramatic successes in recent years, Laos and Rwanda. Such experiences demonstrate that countries that are currently off track are able to get back on track, and are not destined to fail. 

      

 

 

By Kate Anderson, Tyler Ditmore

Since the United Nations Member States officially adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, one of the major narratives in global development has centered on enhancing the capacity of countries to carry out the reforms necessary to achieve these ambitious goals. This is especially true for education, where an estimated 6 out of 10 children and adolescents worldwide are not learning the basics in reading and mathematics. If these trends persist, less than 10 percent of young people in low-income countries will achieve basic skills required for success after secondary education by 2030, when SDG 4 is aspired to be met.

Even if students can master these basic skills, many skills demanded for work and life in the 21st century—such as critical thinking and collaboration—are even scarcer. Although countries the world over are moving toward a 21st century education in their policies, no country is yet an expert on how to provide it. Between 2012 and 2016, the Learning Metrics Task Force (LMTF) shed light on the skills needed for success in the 21st century, as well as how to measure those skills. This included experimenting with country-led approaches to reforming education systems through its Learning Champions initiative.

The Learning Champions were a group of 15 countries, provinces, and cities (Botswana; the City of Bogotá, Colombia; the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina; Ethiopia; Kenya; Kyrgyz Republic; Nepal; Ontario, Canada; Pakistan; Palestine; Rwanda; Senegal; Sudan; Tunisia; and Zambia) that came together to experiment with LMTF recommendations and to develop strategies for improving their education systems. Some Learning Champions applied because their existing assessments showed low learning levels, and they needed to get a clearer picture to ascertain the underlying causes. Others joined because they lacked the ability to measure learning across a broad set of domains, and still others participated because they wanted to prevent their assessment systems from further increasing inequities in education and society. Unlike many projects in which a donor will require specific activities of a country within a fixed project, the Learning Champions initiative operated as a “project-in-reverse” by asking countries to bring together their own network of stakeholders and identify for themselves what aspects of assessment appeared to be missing from their systems. The Learning Champions then designed new strategies or identified existing programs to address those gaps, and the LMTF supported these strategies through knowledge sharing, modest technical assistance, supporting networks between Learning Champions and LMTF members, and convening face-to-face conferences to share goals and learnings. While each Learning Champion focused on a unique set of issues, some of the common themes of the Learning Champions’ activities were:

• Measuring across the breadth of learning. Many of the participants wanted to devise strategies for authentically measuring learning across multiple learning domains, not just traditional academic subjects.
• Continuously assessing learning. Countries were especially interested in learning how to use assessment for teaching and learning, not merely to pass/fail students.
• Focusing on foundational learning. Participants commonly focused on early childhood education and early grades in primary school.
• Improving dissemination of data. Participants acknowledged the need to better share data from existing learning assessments so they can be used to improve teaching and learning.

Although the initiative officially ended in 2016, the LMTF Secretariat at Brookings kept in touch with Learning Champions and recently published a report summarizing the project and its outcomes. The primary lessons the LMTF learned from the initiative were:

• Start small but think big. Many Learning Champions began with a small pilot with the intention of eventual scaling.
• Engage teachers. Several countries found their activities to be enhanced through engaging teachers in the design, implementation, and dissemination of learning assessment, whether through formal partnerships with unions or ad hoc workshops.
• Convene a network. Nearly all Learning Champions convened a broad network within their jurisdiction, often getting stakeholders together who had never before come to the same table.
• Allocate sufficient and consistent resources. Because the LMTF did not provide direct funding to the Learning Champions, countries able to leverage funding on their own tended to be better able to sustain the gains made during the initiative.

The Learning Champions experience did not bring the participants all the way to where they need to be in regard to improving learning. Sustaining a high-quality learning assessment system that informs improvements to learning requires more intensive technical development and financial resources. Now that the Learning Champions initiative is finished, the participants have been working to expand the set of competencies on which their education system focuses. They are working across their regions to build a critical mass of expertise in assessment so that they do not always have to rely on international experts. They are looking for ways to use the expertise in their examinations councils and use it to help improve student learning before the students sit for an exam. Providing a thinkspace for countries to develop plans and experiment with models appears to have been a welcome change from the traditional “project” approach, and has attracted new funding to several of the Learning Champions’ work.

Read the full report here.

      

 

 

By Samantha Custer, Elizabeth King, Tamar Manuelyan Atinc, Lindsay Read, Tanya Sethi

Today, 650 million children around the globe are at risk of being left behind as they fail to learn basic skills. Inequitable access to education is part of the problem, but even when children are in school, they may not be learning. In Uganda, for instance, barely half of grade 6 children read at a grade 2 level. In India, just one in four children enrolled in grade 5 can read a simple sentence or complete simple division problems.

These challenges are widespread. According to the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity (Education Commission), only one in ten children in low-income countries (four in ten in middle-income countries) are on track to gain basic secondary-level skills by 2030. Moreover, the obstacles to learning disproportionately affect marginalized populations—children in poor households or rural areas (especially girls), children with disabilities, and children affected by conflict and violence.

It is clear that the status quo is not good enough, but what should be done differently? While struggling schools would certainly benefit from better facilities and more teachers, research underscores that input-oriented solutions are likely insufficient. Many countries that dedicate substantial resources to education still fall short of ensuring that all children are learning. Meanwhile, relatively resource-poor education systems in Latvia and Vietnam, for example, punch above their weight in achieving greater gains for students than their peers with similar income levels.

Parents, teachers, policymakers, and school administrators need better tools to diagnose where and why learning gaps exist, and assess what strategies they can employ to turn things around. High-quality data and evidence are essential for both tasks.

Numerous governments, organizations, and companies have responded to this challenge and are generating copious amounts of data and analysis to support education decision-making around the world. Nonetheless, large gaps remain, as data management processes at the school and national level are often under-funded, ad hoc, and of variable quality and timeliness.

While continued investments in data creation and management are necessary, the ultimate value of information is not in its production, but its use. Herein lies one of the biggest challenges of translating information into actionable insights: those that produce education data are often far removed from those that make crucial decisions about education policies, programs, and investments. With limited insight on what decision-makers use and need, the likelihood of disconnect between supply and demand is high.

Yet, there has been surprisingly little systematic research on the types of information education decision-makers in developing countries value most—and why. Much of the available evidence on the use of education data in developing countries relies upon individual case studies. These qualitative snapshots offer deep insights on use patterns and challenges in a single context, but make it difficult to draw broader conclusions.

In this report, we offer a unique contribution to this body of knowledge by analyzing the results of two surveys of education policymakers in low- and middle-income countries that asked about their use of data in decision-making. Survey participants include senior- and mid-level government officials, in-country staff of development partner organizations, and domestic civil society leaders, among others. Respondents do not include local-level officials, school administrators, or teachers.

This report aims to help the global education community take stock of what information decision-makers use to measure results and manage change. We define information broadly, including raw statistical and administrative data, quantitative and qualitative analysis, learning assessments, and the results of program evaluations. Drawing upon our review of the literature and the two surveys of end users in developing countries, we offer practical recommendations to help those who fund and produce education data to be more responsive to what decision-makers want and need.

Download full report here »