Sustaining literacy reforms in Mali: Building evidence and ownership

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

Proposal

The interpretation of institutional capacity development and systems strengthening often is not correctly understood by those who are often asking for some form of work be carried out in the area. This misunderstanding or misinterpretations therefore creates an inflated expectation of what can be achieved within the confines of program design focused on accomplishing very specific technical objectives. It has been my experience over the past decade or more that systems strengthening has become a catch-all term sprinkled throughout education project proposals. The term tends to reference the need to make improvements to HR capacity development, policy, process, cross collaboration, and decision making among other matters. Of course, there are few strong reports or assessments available to build an empirical case because systems strengthening is not accurately measured for impact. Counting the number of officials and teachers trained or policies development is not a proper indicator to reflect improvement of the systems within an institution, be it from the top to the bottom of the institutional system.

Organizational development projects had been a normal development project design. Now activities specific to improving institutional efficiencies are a subset of projects more focused these days on learner and teacher performance. Given the new trend in program design, I contend that resources that are necessary to make significant advancements in systems strengthening improvements have been drastically reduced while the performance expectation has remained high without acknowledging the design constraints. This presentation is not intended to highlight any particular project or country but the scenario that has been created and easily recognized.

Systems strengthening programming is key factor to establish a solid foundation for sustainability. Efforts to carryout systems strengthening activities, though sometimes successful in specific areas, don’t always achieve the intended outcome within the institutions. The limited successes factor has a direct impact on true sustainability. Strategic programing around institutional capacity development should no longer be veiled by the term “systems strengthening” found in projects that have a greater focus on technical performance indicators. They can be combined, but have equal importance to ensure effort to achieve sustainability objectives are met.

Authors

• Thelma Khelghati, EDC

• Nancy Devine, Education Development Center (EDC)