Getting there: Achieving scale and sustainability through long-term investment and a commitment to iterative, incremental growth

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Although enormous progress has been made on a global scale in increasing access to education, the glut of students entering schools in low and middle income countries has strained systems to and beyond capacity, and rendered them unable to provide the high-quality teaching and learning experiences necessary to prepare children for success in higher education, the workforce, and civic life. As more and more evidence emerges that many children enrolled in school cannot read, write, problem solve, or envision a practical future for themselves, pressure on governments, their resource partners, and education program implementers to address these problems quickly and completely has increased. Three- to five-year program cycles with steep expectations for transformation of teacher performance, student outcomes, and system efficiency result in the cyclical reinvention of the wheel. Short term, high-pressure, high-turnover programming strains many systems even further, and does not contribute to long-term country ownership, institutionalization of innovations that work, or, ultimately, to self-reliance.
In some cases, however, countries and their funding partners have been able to align their approaches and their goals to focus on longer-term investment in and commitment to system development, with striking results. This panel examines four countries where commitments of a decade or more in the same stream of programming have permitted an incremental and iterative approach that allows innovations to be fully localized, deeply explored, and institutionalized through collaboration with a range of stakeholders. The examples of Mali, the Philippines, Zambia and Rwanda tell a story of how to build to quality, scale, and sustainability through iterative partnerships. The trust, multilayered relationships, high-quality products, and extended impact that have developed in these contexts has supported not only improved outcomes for children and youth, but also deep and powerful capacity development within the education sector, broadly writ. As stakeholders cycle through roles as government or business partners, NGO/CSO staff, community leaders, and parents, they build wider support for the overall effort among homes, NGOs, and communities. As system actors participate in and test interventions for themselves, they assume agency and authority over new tools, processes, and ways of thinking that thus become embedded in education systems. And as programs and products are iterated and explored over the long term, they integrate better with and respond more fully to the needs and opportunities of the contexts in which they are being deployed.
In Zambia, 20 years of collaboration have facilitated the development of a robust and vigorous sector of community schools, and their increasing integration into the government education system. Performance of students in these schools keeps pace with or betters that of their more traditionally-educated peers, and the community schools environment has served as a unique testing ground for innovation and the power of civic commitment to education. In Mali, 12 years of gradual expansion of a pedagogical model for literacy that was developed in full partnership with the government has resulted in the transformation of classroom experiences for teachers and learners as well as a transformation of expectations and understanding of literacy in the community more broadly. In the Philippines, a 12-year focus on education quality improvement and opportunity development for the marginalized and at risk has allowed the Department of Education to both operationalize its MT-MBE policy and build solid structures and resources for continued improvement. And in Rwanda, a decade-long mutual exploration of opportunities and partnerships has led to a model of flexible, relevant and affordable youth education for employment.
This panel offers reflections on the key factors in the development of long-term, successful partnerships for education development based on these four cases, and presents a framework for thinking about success in programming over the longer term. The lessons of these longitudinal investments can inform a rethinking of designs, timelines, processes, and goals of education programming in keeping with a turn to system building that is critical to ensuring the enhancement of quality as well as access.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Individual Presentations

• Equality, Trust and Vision: 20 Years of Collaboration in Zambia - Jennifer Kennedy, Education Development Center

• Transforming youth education for employment in Rwanda: A decade’s lessons - Melanie Sany, Education Development Center

• 12 years of building scale and sustainability in literacy: The case of Mali - Thelma Khelghati, EDC

• Together we progress: Institutionalization and sustainability of education quality improvement over 12 years in the Philippines - Ces Ochoa, Education Development Center (EDC)