Educational Social Impact Bond Project in Russia: Design and Implementation Experience to Reduce School Failure

• In Event: Knowledge for Building a Fair and Inclusive Education: Research and Case Studies From Russia

Abstract

"The first Russian Social Impact Bond Project has been implemented since 2019 in the Khangalassky ulus of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). It includes 4 parties: the State Development Corporation VEB.RF (intermediary), the Fund for the Development of the Far East and the Baikal Region (investor), the government of Yakutia and the Institute of Education of the Higher School of Economics (executor). Its main task is to improve the quality of general education in the ulus, primarily by reducing the number of leisurely students. It also aims to identify sustainable practices for further replication.
In the presentation, we will present the experience of designing and implementing the project. We will show why widespread models of improving school effectiveness and results required to adapt to the specifics of a particular territory and educational system, and what role did the research plays in this.
The territory of implementation is the Khangalassky district of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), an area with a rather poor socio-cultural environment, which creates risks for the quality of educational results. Another risk factor is the large proportion of children for whom Russian language is not their mother tongue.
In developing the project, we relied on the SIB project methodology (Joynes, 2019), school effectiveness models (Mortimore, 1998; Reynolds, Hopkins et al., 2001; Kosaretsky, Pinskaya et al., 2018), experience in implementing large intervention programs (McCormick et al. al. 2015; Ainscow, et al., 2020). The main idea of the project is to create a school environment based on the internal potential of the system and conducive to the search for new strategies (Stoll, 2009).
The project includes several blocks of work: transformation of management practices, uniting the efforts of all schools through networking, developing teachers' pedagogical skills, involving parents and organizing regular out-of-school educational programs.
SIB imposes particularly high demands on the high-quality study of all components of the project, since the payment to the investor from the region is carried out only if a predetermined result is achieved.
All this led to a request for conducting research within the framework of the project, allowing to reduce uncertainty and the most reasonable approach to determining the target effects, target groups and compound of interventions.
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Authors

• Rostislav Gorbovsky, HSE University, Institute of Education

• Sergei Kosaretski, Higher School of Economics