NN39, October 2007
Best Practice in Education and Training: Hype or Hope?
Literacy For Life: Do We Know How Much It Will Cost?
By Roy Carr-Hill, Institute of Education, London
The persistence of around 1 billion illiterates has been a disgrace for over 30 years. There have been a large number of small scale programmes ? especially those run by NGOs such as ActionAid - but it is acknowledged that there is a need to better understand both the costing structure of different programmes, including what categories/components are identified and / or omitted, and their effectiveness before suggesting that any one approach or set of approaches is the most appropriate.Costing Programmes
A wide range of factors are likely to affect costs (see Oxenham, 2002): but the diversity of programmes in terms of their costings, modalities, objectives and intended outcomes makes it very difficult to make meaningful comparisons between them. This note draws on a recent study by Carr-hill and Roberts who collected actual costs of programmes from nine programmes that were supposedly successful in both operational and output terms.
Appropriate Range of Costs
The report on the ActionAid/Global Campaign for Education survey suggested that a good quality literacy programme that included all the features they had identified in their review was likely to cost between US$50 and US$100 per learner per year for at least three years (two years initial learning + ensuring further learning opportunities are available for all).
The problem with setting a benchmark like this is that, in addition to the diversity of programmes organised in very different ways, circumstances vary (the social, linguistic, economic, geographical and historical contexts will all impact on the needs of learners, the range of approaches required, and hence costs). In the programmes studied, there is a five-fold range from US$63 to US$299 per participant per year.
Determining unit costs?
Programme unit costs are usually calculated by dividing total programme costs by the number of learners, but;
1. In principle, the opportunity cost of the literacy participants, the imputed costs of facilities provided in kind, and the opportunity costs of the time of volunteer facilitators, should all be included. This very rarely happens.
2. Whatever costs are included, there are three figures that could be useful for a programme implementer:
Unit costs per learner at the start of the cycle
Unit costs per learner at the end of the cycle
Marginal unit costs calculated as the additional costs for one learner to join an already functioning class
3. The difference between costs per learner and the costs per completer and per ?successful? completer are important. At the same time, one should not assume that drop-outs or those who do not pass assessments have gained nothing from the course.
4. A full societal economic costing should consider other inputs that have contributed to literacy. Many of the participants in literacy programmes have previously been to school and may have acquired some literacy skills (see Carr-Hill, 1999). Abadzi (2004) argues that the total cost to make them literate should arguably include the money already spent on them. Whilst that argument could be extended almost indefinitely and without a clear resolution, one might take it into consideration when debating the appropriate follow-up to those who drop out of school.
Most important factor
Oxenham (2002) found that the most important factor in determining the unit cost of a programme was whether or not the programme relied on facilitators who received a salary or on volunteers with possibly a small honorarium. Obviously this is an important issue, particularly at provider level, but our investigation suggests that an even bigger issue may be the treatment of central management and overhead costs. In particular, for many government programmes, it is very difficult to attribute the costs of a permanent civil service to specific programmes.
Conclusions
The International Literacy Decade has prompted calls for renewed commitment to funding adult literacy; but it is not straightforward.
Content of programme
There remains uncertainty over the effectiveness of different modalities for delivering adult literacy programmes partly because of the contextual specificity of each programme, partly because there has usually been insufficient attention to straightforward monitoring of the programme and also perhaps partly because there have been insufficient external evaluations of those programmes. Different modalities may be more appropriate in some circumstances (countries/ provinces) than in others and the association between modality and circumstances has not yet been established so that the relative effectiveness of different programme costs cannot be assessed.
It is difficult to propose a common approach to monitoring; instead it is important that each programme should articulate clearly its objectives and intended outcomes and how it is monitoring both of those.
Accounting Practices and Reporting of Costs
Accounting practices clearly differ. It would be possible to promote common accounting practices based on internationally accepted accounting procedures but, given the diversity of approaches already described, it is unclear that there would be much advantage in such harmonisation and there is a real query as to whether this would lead to more bureaucratic costs than the savings it might generate. Indeed one might question the cost effectiveness of such harmonisation. Instead, we would argue for a more general agreement about the components that should be considered in any costing of an adult literacy programme but that the imposition of a common costing structure would not be appropriate.
The evidence we have unearthed, suggests that the minimum unit cost of making an adult literate is much more likely to lie in the region of US$100, than the US$50 minimum currently stated in Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE) documentation (UNESCO 2006).
Further Exploration of those Issues
Ideally, what are required are longitudinal studies of the costing and outcomes of specific literacy programmes to understand how costs and ?successes? vary over the lifetime of a programme; and to understand the starting point of that target population. This would be very onerous and resource intensive. But a first step at least towards identifying appropriate costings would be for local consultants to compile an inventory of the major programmes in each country (international consultants would eat up the budget for literacy!). This inventory should include information on objectives, intended outcomes, target audience (size and type), design of programme, delivery modalities, and specific factors making for good or poor quality. Compiling such an inventory appears tedious but is essential for developing an understanding of what is required (see Carr-Hill 1986; Carron and Carr-Hill 1990). This could be the basis for review and discussion at the national level.
References
Abadzi, H. (2003) Improving Adult Literacy Outcomes: Lessons from Cognitive Research for Developing Countries. Directions in Development Series (Washington D C: World Bank).
Carr-Hill, R. (1986) An Inventory of Non-Formal Programmes, International Institute of Educational Planning.
Carron G. and Carr-Hill R. (1990) Information Base for Non Formal Education, International Institute of Educational Planning.
Global Campaign for Education & ActionAid International (2005) Global Benchmarks for Adult Literacy. A Final Report Produced for the Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2006 & UNESCO.
Okech A, Carr-Hill R, Katahoire A, Kakooza T, Ndidde A, Oxenham J (2001) Adult literacy programmes in Uganda. Africa Region Human Development Series (World Bank, Washington DC).
Oxenham J (2006) Education for all adults: the forgotten challenge. Directions in development, World Bank Series. (World Bank).
UNESCO (2005) Literacy for Life. EFA Global Monitoring Report 2006. (Paris, UNESCO).
UNESCO (2006) Literacy Initiative for Empowerment: 2005-2015. Vision and Strategy Paper, 2nd Edition (UNESCO, Paris).
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