Different Approaches to Accountability in the Education Sector: What Role for Civil Society?

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Panellists (alphabetically): 1) Florencia Guerzovich (The Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA)) 2) Felipe J. Hevia (CIESAS-Golfo, Mexico) 3) Muriel Poisson (International Institute for Educational Planning IIEP) 4) Imad Sabi (Oxfam IBIS Education Out Loud) and Mireille de Konig
Chair: Lars Udholt (Oxfam IBIS Education Out Loud)
Discussant: Sarah Beardmore (Global Partnership for Education)

Abstract:
This panel will examine different frameworks and institutional approaches to increase accountability in the education sector, with a focus on civil society’s role in different strategies and models used to promote inclusive sector dialogues and increased citizen engagement and participation in educational planning and policy-making. The panellists consider approaches researched by IIEP (open school data), the Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA)’s collaborative social accountability model and the pathway it opens for scaling up accountability in the education sector, and the potentials for increased and meaningful civil society participation in inclusive education sector dialogue processes through the Global Partnership for Education (GPE)’s new operational model and its support to strengthen the organizational and educational capacities of civil society. Those approaches will allow the examination of the various conceptual and theoretical assumptions regarding accountability, state – civil society relations, governance models, and multi-level interactions between national and global processes. They also allow for analysing “multi-scalar or multi-level change strategies” behind those approaches (Anderson, Fox and Gaventa 2020).
While there is widespread agreement, bordering on consensus, on the inseparability of accountability and democratic governance, academic debates on social accountability have been characterized as “scattered with incompatible conceptualizations, high normative expectations, and sobering findings” (Brummel 2021). Applications of different social accountability models are legitimately challenged by questions of their impact, particularly at the system and outcomes levels. Interventions promoting open data, or open government data, for example, which are seen as a means to innovate, add value, and improve outcomes in a variety of sectors, including education (Poisson 2019, 2020, 2021), have been difficult to evaluate, especially for their social and political impacts. Jelenic (2019) even speaks of “a murky theory of change” that has emerged in the public sector and which automatically links the use of open government data with greater government accountability and improved service delivery. Is there evidence that open data in the education sector, and the possibilities this provides for analysis and proposals from different actors, such as civil society, leads to both higher levels of accountability and better education outcomes? The presentation by Muriel Poisson in the panel will attempt to answer such questions based on research that IIEP conducted on open school data in different countries, with a focus on country cases where civil society participation was particularly strong.
Accountability as a value, and as a model, is at the heart of many education platforms and frameworks. The Education 2030 Framework for Action, as an example, refers to accountability more than 20 times, in the forms of ‘accountability,’ ‘accountable,’ or ‘to account for’ (Smith and Benavot 2019). The Global Partnership for Education describes its model of multi-stakeholder partnership as one of mutual accountabilities. And as in any system of accountability there are account-holders and account-givers, accountability presupposes and should lead to strengthening modes of democratic participation of different stakeholders in policy-making. In the education sector, Smith and Benavot suggest looking at this through the lens of structured voice, whereby actors such as civil society are enabled to participate in organized opportunities where they articulate ad present their views. The presentation by Sabi and de Konig in the panel looks at the Global Partnership for Education’s new operational model, which emphasizes inclusive sector dialogue and considers teacher representative and civil society organizations as key actors in these processes. It asks whether an institutionally-promoted model of inclusive dialogue, which also provides support to strengthen civil society capacity, increases democratic participation and voice, and what effects this may have on the prospects of system reform and improved educational outcomes in the countries where GPE operates, and what role do different contextual factors play . The paper presented by Guerzovitch examines similar questions from the perspective of the Global Partnership for Social Accountability and its work in a number of countries where the targeted sector was education.
Recent research in sectors others than education has asked whether social accountability approaches do work (Naher et. al. 2020, for low- and middle-income countries in WHO’s South Asia region) and what methods there are to measure the effects of social accountability interventions (Marston et. al. 2020, for interventions in reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health programs). Such research has been prompted by the proliferation of social accountability strategies, which are perceived to enhance transparency and accountability through bottom-up approaches, while their effectiveness has not been explored comprehensively, in terms of their results in reforming health systems and their impact in improving health outcomes. While a range of positive outcomes are attributed to social accountability interventions, the health-sector focused research shows that the evidence for system- and outcome-level influence and impact is inconclusive and that there is no common blueprint for a viable and effective accountability mechanisms. Instead, there is an emphasis that effectiveness depends on “context, capacity, information, spectrum of actor involvement, independence from power agendas, and leadership” (Naher et. al 2020). Similarly, Marston et. al. (2020) conclude that taking account of broader historical and socio-political dimensions are needed to better understand whether and how social accountability interventions work, and to what extent are they transferable.
The panel, as a whole, will look at such questions, including implementation challenges of social accountability models, in the education sector. The paper by Hevia reflects on the different models to argue for an expanded vision of social accountability in education; based on a human rights perspective, when all actors assume responsibility, inside and outside schools.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Lars Udholt, Oxfam IBIS Education Out Loud

Individual Presentations

• Facing biases of Educational Accountability - Felipe Hevia, CIESAS

• Collaborative Social Accountability for Learning: From the School to Change at Scale - Maria Florencia Guerzovich, Global Partnership for Social Accountability

• Open School Data as a Form of Increased Citizen Engagement and Accountability - Muriel Poisson, UNESCO-IIEP

• Structured Civil Society Voice in the Global Partnership for Education’s new Operational Model: Critical Requirement for System Reform and Improved Accountability? - Imad Sabi, Oxfam IBIS

Discussant

• Sarah Beardmore, Global Partnership for Education