Reflecting on Four Decades of Work in Education for International Development

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

The field of international education continues to progress, adding strategies, actors, funding modalities, technological solutions, and more. At the same time, the sector appears to be making progress in many ways, with most countries having achieved or fast approaching 100% primary enrollment, gender equity, greater numbers of children and youth reaching secondary and tertiary education, and more. Yet, systems still fail to teach the majority of their children to read or perform basic calculations. Dropout rates remain high, especially for lower grades. The teaching profession continues to be a second or third choice, with far too few instructors and, consequently, far too many overenrolled students. Curricula and textbooks similarly continue to be “over-stuffed” and teaching and assessment are routinely rote, despite widespread efforts to install competency-based approaches. The characterization that education systems aspire to teaching 21st Century skills while delivering 20th Century content using 19th Century pedagogic methods continues to ring true.

The proposed panel will bring together six “Old Guard” – OG – international education development agents to reflect on four decades of international and national experience working in the sector. The panel members will comprise primarily professionals who have worked in the technical assistance space, emphasizing perspectives from working within the “belly” of the donor community “beast.” However, the panel will also include at least one representative of a host government ministry to offer insights on the experience of the recipients of international assistance.

The overall aim will be to offer insights to help understand how we have ended up where we are and how we might make greater and quicker progress than has occurred since the Jomtien Conference period. The panel members will focus their remarks on a few key macro questions:
1. What have we seen as the major successes and progress over our career? What have been the major shortfalls or disappointments?
2. What new trends provoke feelings of promise? Which ones evoke disappointment or concern?
3. Which lessons seem most valuable for moving the sector into the future?

They will also explore some more strategic questions, such as:
1. Why has it been so much harder to make progress improving learning outcomes, compared to progress in increasing access?
2. Since Jomtien, the amount of financing needed to meet the resource requirements to achieve EFA, then the SDGs has consistently fallen short. What is achievable within realistic assumptions about the likely availability of domestic and external financing for education? What is needed to get more impact from the resources being expended?
3. What aspects of how development agencies and organizations operate have contributed to or been obstacles to achieving greater impact?

The proposed format will permit each panel member to share for no more than five minutes and then use a “new guard” moderator (still to be identified) to ask questions and invite questions from the audience. The co-conveners will solicit single most “promising” recommendations for the attendees to produce a blog, adding these ideas to the comments of the panelists.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Organizer

• Joshua A Muskin, Geneva Global

Chairs

• Joseph DeStefano, Independent Consultant

• Yasmin Sitabkhan, RTI International

Individual Presentations

• Perspectives on Four Decades of Work in International Education Development - A - Joseph DeStefano, Independent Consultant

• Perspectives on Four Decades of Work in International Education Development – B - Joshua A Muskin, Geneva Global

• Perspectives on Four Decades of Work in International Education Development – C - Yasmin Sitabkhan, RTI International

Discussants

• Yasmin Sitabkhan, RTI International

• Nancy Devine, EDC