Pathways for sustaining education reforms: Challenges and opportunities in two countries

• In Event: Examining a Sustainability Framework for Early Grade Reading

Proposal

The challenge of introducing reforms in educational systems, bringing them to scale, and sustaining effective implementation across the system has been a central topic to education development for decades. The programmatic focus on introducing evidence-based instructional practices to improve learning outcomes, particularly for early grade reading, is bringing this challenge into sharp focus in many countries around the world. This panel is exploring frameworks for providing specific guidance on scaling and sustaining EGR practices in donor-supported education programs.

This paper will utilize a conceptual framework to assess the challenges and opportunities for sustaining these reforms in two countries with very different programmatic footprints. The Ghana program is a large scale, system-wide program introducing EGR in multiple languages tied into policy, social marketing, and evaluation support activities. The Nigeria program is a small-scale pilot in two states with a high degree of local government commitment, which is designed to provide insights into sustaining and scaling programs. The paper will discuss the dynamics of the reforms in the two countries at the classroom and government level, looking at the technical, institutional, and political dimensions that create pathways for sustainable reform.

Author

• John Gillies, FHI 360