Entry points for strengthening the role of mid-tier officials in foundational learning reforms: A scoping synthesis

• In Event: Explorations of Educational Reforms and Tools for School Improvement

Proposal

In an increasingly digital society, there is a collective responsibility to equip all children with the knowledge, skills, and tools that they will need to thrive in an interconnected, rapidly changing world. This includes foundational skills such as literacy and numeracy as starting points for learning how to navigate an information-rich world. A well-functioning education bureaucracy, including mid-tier officials who act as intermediaries between top decisionmakers and local schools, is a prerequisite for effectively implementing education policies and programmes that empower children with such knowledge, skills, and tools at a regional or national scale. However, many education systems in the global south do not have the comparatively high levels of financing and well-established human resource pipelines needed to do this effectively.

Accordingly, this scoping synthesis draws on existing research and on firsthand input from implementers to identify entry points for strengthening the role of the middle tier in foundational learning reforms. This synthesis aims to inform both government and non-governmental actors that are looking to better support mid-tier officials, as well as to inform future research by identifying research gaps and promising practices that would benefit from adaptation and testing in other contexts.

The paper proposes a framework that articulates evidence-based entry points for strengthening the role of the middle tier. It further provides findings that are sufficiently granular to be actionable and sufficiently aggregated to serve as a heuristic in a range of educational contexts.

This synthesis draws on primary and secondary academic literature in comparative education (eg Asim et al, 2023), educational research (eg Hargreaves & Fullan 2012), public management (eg Honig 2023), economics (eg Bandiera et al 2021), political science (eg Mangla 2022), and other disciplines, as well as carefully researched grey literature (eg Tournier et al 2023). First, a preliminary typology was developed based on the conceptual literature. Next, the framework was tested and iteratively refined by applying it to existing primary studies of (a) effective actions that mid-tier officials have taken to strengthen children’s foundational learning, especially in supporting teachers and school leaders and (b) effective reforms and initiatives that have strengthened mid-tier officials’ contributions to children’s foundational learning. As far as possible, an emphasis is placed on studies in global south contexts, including India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil, Peru, and Argentina, among others. This framework will be further refined through fieldwork in a global south country, involving two-way feedback sessions to share the desk-based synthesis with mid-tier officials and with non-governmental actors and, in turn, integrate their lived experiences and lessons learned into the framework.

The framework centres on three broad categories of actions that mid-tier officials can take to contribute to children’s foundational learning: equipping teachers and other school-level actors with the knowledge and resources to work toward foundational learning goals; connecting teachers and other school-level actors to others working toward the same goals; and empowering teachers and other school-level actors with clear mandates to act in line with foundational learning goals and adapt approaches to their classroom contexts. Correspondingly, those intending to strengthen the role of mid-tier bureaucrats likewise need to equip, connect, and empower mid-tier bureaucrats in line with educational goals such as foundational literacy and numeracy. Findings suggest that sustainable change may require a combination of the three categories. For example, programmes that simply equip mid-tier officials with new knowledge without deepening their connections or strengthening their empowerment have been less likely to result in long-term changes in organisational culture or, more importantly, in children’s learning.

This paper builds on existing research by bringing together and identifying common threads in research on mid-tier officials across different contexts and sectors. Additionally, it offers a simple but powerful framework to inform and facilitate dialogue between subsequent research, policy, and practice.


References

Asim, M., Mundy, K., Manion, C., & Tahir, I. (2023). The “Missing Middle” of Education Service Delivery in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. Comparative Education Review, 67(2), 353–378.

Bandiera, O., Best, M. C., Khan, A. Q., & Prat, A. (2021). The Allocation of Authority in Organizations: A Field Experiment with Bureaucrats. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 136(4), 2195–2242.

Hargreaves, A., & Fullan, M. (2012). Professional capital: Transforming teaching in every school. Teachers College Press.

Honig, D. (2024). Mission Driven Bureaucrats: Empowering People To Help Government Do Better. Oxford University Press.

Mangla, A. (2022). Making Bureaucracy Work: Norms, Education and Public Service Delivery in Rural India. Cambridge University Press.

Tournier, B., Chimier, C., & Jones, C. (Eds.). (2023). Leading teaching and learning together: The role of the middle tier. IIEP-UNESCO, Education Development Trust.

Author

• Yue-Yi Hwa, What Works Hub for Global Education, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford