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The power to disrupt: making data accessible to empower local decision-makers

Thu, March 14, 9:30 to 11:00am, Hyatt Regency Miami, Floor: Terrace Level, Brickell South

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Using information to make decisions is the cornerstone of most education projects provided through technical assistance. This technical assistance is usually accompanied by data-collection and presentation software. Frequently, the two combined focus on channeling the information from local service providers to central authorities to assist in national planning and budgeting decisions. As a result, the data systems often contain an overwhelming amount of information which remains inaccessible to local decision-makers. And yet it is these local decision-makers, at school and (sub-)regional levels that make decisions that have the greatest impact on the quality of service delivery.

This panel does not deny the importance of data for decision-making. Rather, we demonstrate that focused data presented in simple formats has the power to disrupt norms and routines and to focus local managerial attention on trouble spots and on interventions that have the greatest influence on quality service delivery. We also discuss the challenge of sending a consistent message regarding underlying perceptions of data and data use in an environment of constant emerging technologies. In addition, we are noting that, partly driven by technological progress in the global North, the design of education indicators, the data collection, analysis and presentation mechanisms are sometimes disconnected with the needs and capacity in the countries where we work.
Sophisticated software and hardware, digital dashboards, AI and other high tech solutions are being introduced with donor funding supporting the initial design and roll out. However, critical issues threaten sustainability of such interventions in countries with limited financial and technical skills. NGOs, donors and other stakeholders will first need to understand the political, economic and socio-cultural drivers leading to issues in the quality of education. This requires time, often more time than we have in a regular 5 year project cycle.
This panel will present 3 scenarios in which INGOs have worked long term with local governments and stakeholders to not only thoroughly understand the context but to work with stakeholders to identify the most essential needs to improve education; teaching and student learning. Joint awareness raising has led to true, sustained, agency to improve service delivery. Creating that locally driven will and the aspiration for change has proven to be key in the successes achieved in the presented case studies. Starting from a shared understanding about what data should be collected and how it should feed into targeted supervision, we piloted and designed supervision models that inform and empower stakeholders. Sustainability lies in providing the data, creating transparency and accountability, supervision and coaching protocols to all levels, in particular on provincial, district and community levels.

This panel will present three papers that describe the process for making data accessible to local decision-makers.
In Mozambique World Education (WE) has worked with the Ministry of Education and Human Development (MINEDH) for almost a decade to design district and provincial supervision guidelines. Initially piloted on provincial level, these guidelines are now adopted nationally. This presentation will outline how improvements were driven by changing priorities, analysis of available resources and continuous analysis of teaching, school management and student learning data.
In Tanzania, over a ten -year period a national handbook for evaluating school quality was iteratively converted into a tool for monitoring school quality, which, in turn, was adapted to provide indicators of quality assurance, which were further refined by establishing benchmarks that defined acceptable quality, which were finally adopted by local administrative authorities to identify those schools most in need of managerial support. This process culminated in targeted support to under-performing schools. The presentation will demonstrate how this focused approach to addressing underperformance has disrupted the tradition of allocating more resources to already high performing schools. . In Honduras and Guatemala, teachers have been provided with an application that works on their mobile devices to allow teachers to track the attendance and academic progress of individual students. This enables targeted psycho-social support. Although the data can be aggregated at school level, the information is anonymised, disrupting the traditional punitive nature of the system.
Collectively, this panel will discuss the benefits and challenges of localized data for decision-making.

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