Methods non-state organizations can use to influence government education policies: lessons from 75 organizations in Brazil, Kenya, India, Indonesia, Malaysia

• In Event: The power of connecting civil society action into a collective voice for systems change

Proposal

Global School Leaders (GSL) is a nonprofit that supports organizations that train headteachers/principals - across Latin America, Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Since their launch in 2017, they focused on supporting organizations in nine countries to deliver stronger programs at a smaller scale, but they are interested in: what would it take to influence government policies at a larger scale, to impact many more school leaders, teachers, and students?

From January to July 2023, I completed a study for GSL to answer these questions. Our goal was to capture methods used by other non-state organizations who successfully influenced local government policies and reforms. We also aimed to understand what methods GSL and their partners could use to influence funders and policymakers globally, to prioritize and increase their funding to policies related to school leaders.

To answer these questions, I applied qualitative methods including:
- Semi-structured interviews with 54 experts: funders, funder networks, advocacy organizations, technical assistance providers, government policymakers. (Some in-person and some virtual.) Interviewed organizations include PAL Network, Education Partnerships Group, Ilifa Labantwana, Africa Practice, Movimento pela Base, Todos pela Educação, Tanoto Foundation, Teach for Malaysia, Co-Impact, ELMA Foundation, Big Win Philanthropies, etc.
- Desk research and document analysis of 75 organizations, including some in-person site visits.
- Deep dives into key education systems: Brazil, Kenya, India, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
- Identification of leading education orgs who influenced governments in other Global South countries (such as South Africa, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Pakistan).
- Identification of six advocacy organizations that are models for education organizations, in other sectors: community health workers, racial equity, youth citizenship, environment, sanitation, and healthcare.

I also drew on existing theories about orchestration of collective action, social movements for education reform, coalition-building, the political economy of education reform processes, and other topics. However, the research methods intentionally focused on capturing data from practitioners and advocacy organizations in the field, because their knowledge is rarely captured by academic literature.

The findings from the research were:
- A set of over 50 tactics that non-state education organizations can use to influence government policy and reforms. For example:
* Map key agencies, positions, people, and enabling/limiting factors in your system.
* Scenario planning to prepare for multiple political landscape shifts.
* Simple messaging and shared policy goals.
* Fanning relationships with champions and allies.
* Re-framing your goals into government priorities.
* Advocacy campaigns to influence voters and politicians with targeted messaging.
* Create an in-house government innovation lab on your topic area.
* Exposure trips for policymakers to experience your programs firsthand.
* Orchestrate co-design of policies with isolated agencies.
* Generate costing/payer models that are feasible with government budgets and staff.
* Capture data government doesn’t have.
* Create a public global policy tracker on your issue area.
* Find incentives and rewards for politicians who prioritize your issue.
* Work through multiple layers simultaneously: President/PM, national agencies, state/province, county, district, municipalities, private schools.
- Five sets of context-specific approaches and tactics particularly appropriate for Brazil, Kenya, India, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
- Tactics and detailed overview of the best model for what Global School Leaders can achieve through collective action to influence government: Community Health Impact Coalition (a field catalyst orchestrating dozens of operators and funders to influence government policies on community health workers).
- Tactics that non-state organizations can use to influence funders globally and multilaterals like the World Bank.

We will share these findings through:
- A public toolkit for how non-state education organizations can influence government (published on GSL website).
- An article sharing takeaways and key findings from the research, in a publication such as the Brookings Institution Center for Universal Education blog.
- An article sharing other findings from the research in the author’s newsletter, which reaches over 5,000 education practitioners and funders worldwide.
(The research outputs will be published in August 2023, so a link to the publication is not available at the time of CIES submission. However, the author will provide this link in materials to CIES participants.)

The implications of the study are that we generated a new dataset of tools and tactics that will be useful to many non-state organizations worldwide who aim to influence governments and education policies. The study is an important contribution because while many of the 54 organizations interviewed are doing critical advocacy work and have had powerful successes in the education sector, many of their methods are not written down; they typically hold information about their tactics in their heads. They are so busy doing the work and coaching their team to do the work, that they don’t write down their methods. Our toolkit is valuable because it shares their methods in clear, easily accessible language that other organizations can access for free.

This is important because while many non-state organizations aim to grow their reach, few are able to successfully shape government policies because the process involves so many obstacles. Many organizations create impact at pilot or small scale in a few schools, districts or states - but not enough impact country-wide policies and government implementation. This scaling process is extremely difficult because it requires understanding complex local political contexts that are constantly changing (due to elections and crises like inflation). However, there are a few organizations who managed to succeed in the journey to impact government policy. Our contribution of a set of tactics from across the advocacy sector, will be a useful resource to many organizations who would like to influence governments.

This study clearly links to the CIES 2024 theme ‘the Power of Protest’ because our findings are about how civil society can use protest and other methods to influence government to take action on education issues. They show how there are a range of tactics by which non-state organizations can make their voices heard and bring light to critical issues. While citizens taking to the street is one form of protest, there are many forms of protest unearthed by this study - such as coalitions to advocate for policy goals, lobbying meetings with policymakers, communications campaigns through the media, and many more.

Author

• Kathlyn Pattillo, EdWell