Sustainable or short-lived? Lessons from results-based financing in education

Group Submission Type: Paper Session

Proposal

Objective: To share lessons from an assessment of the use of results-based financing in education.

Format: A panel of development practitioners and development agency staff will discuss RBF experiences in various countries with a focus on issues of sustainability. The panel will be organized around a new report from the World Bank that outlines the impacts of RBF on teachers; students and families; schools; and governments. Panelists will present real-life RBF interventions and approaches with a focus on highlighting how and when the financing modality has been effective.

The session will be as interactive as possible, encouraging audience participation.

Description: Mobilizing additional resources will be necessary to achieve the SDGs in education but not sufficient. Evidence shows that increases in public education spending alone do not always translate into improved learning outcomes. A stronger focus on the efficiency and effectiveness of how these resources are used is needed if education systems are to be improved and the SDG goals in education achieved.

Results-based financing (RBF) is increasingly seen as a promising approach to strengthen the link between spending and education outcomes.

The World Bank and the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) use RBF to support country education systems. With some of the first RBF projects now closed and a growing evidence base on the use of RBF in education, a new report by the World Bank assesses the use of RBF in education over the last five years. The session will briefly highlight the main findings from the report and a panel of practitioners will discuss their use of RBF in education.
The report has several key messages that will be discussed amongst the panel, including:

1. When has incentivization worked? Little evidence is available to suggest that incentives can increase learning outcomes, but there has been some success with teacher incentives (A representative from Twaweza, a Tanzanian NGO, will discuss how well-designed teacher incentives schemes that are tied to performance can increase student learning.)
2. How can RBF be more effective during the project cycle?
a. On the design side: Cascading incentives, are national governments the “right” level to incentivize? (Rwanda and Ethiopia)
b. On the implementation side: Encouraging more adaptive implementation (Using monitoring systems as a feedback mechanism rather than as a punitive measure: a representative from the Ministry of Education in Rwanda will discuss strategies devised to improve efficiency in planning, implementation and monitoring of the sector plan by ensuring availability of data at decentralized levels
3. Addressing critiques of RBF, for example, that it promotes cream skimming or cherry picking (A representative from the Ministry of Education in Ethiopia will discuss how RBF has been able to promote equity by addressing the gender balance in school leadership and providing additional resources to the school level to support students with special needs)
4. Is RBF sustainable? The jury is out. Some evidence of sustainability from CCTs, but not enough projects have closed, more evidence in health that effects could be longstanding. (All panelists will discuss this topic)


Featured speakers:
- World Bank Group
- Global Partnership for Education
- Twaweza –Tanzania-based organization that works on teacher incentives
- Two country representatives from GPE Development Country Partners ministries of education

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Raphaelle Martinez, Global Partnership for Education

Presenters

• Youdi Schipper, Amsterdam Institute for International Development

• Margaret Irving, Global Partnership for Education

Individual Presentations

• Results-based financing in education: Lessons on what works - Jessica Lee, World Bank