NN39, October 2007
Best Practice in Education and Training: Hype or Hope?
Seeking Best Practice In Aid Delivery
By Harvey Smith, CfBT Education Trust, Africa
KeywordsAid modalities, direct budget support (DBS), Best practice
Summary
This article argues that best practice for education requires that an appropriate balance is maintained between aid modalities to create sustainable high quality service delivery where it really matters, that is in the schools.
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When we talk of best practice we are likely to be assuming that our interlocutors share our own answers to the questions ?best for what?? or ?best for whom??. But they may not. In aid funding for education and training, different stakeholders may have in mind what is best for the donors, what is best for the partner governments, what is best for the education providers or what is best for the learners. Current practice suggests these are not identical.
Donor countries? concerns to improve the effectiveness of their aid led to the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (OECD 2005) and a range of activities to follow this up. A quick look at the Declaration reveals that, while there is an initial reference to reducing poverty and inequality, there is then no mention of those who provide the necessary services (such as schools and teachers or clinics and doctors) nor of those who are intended to benefit from the services (such as the learners and the sick) which the effective aid is expected to fund. By implication, best practice for the Paris Declaration partners means effective harmonisation and alignment: these are necessary to increase efficiency, but will clearly not be sufficient to result in the most effective impact of aid on the intended beneficiaries.
Other elements of best practice for donors include ownership and accountability. The move by many aid-giving countries to providing a large proportion of their aid through direct budget support (DBS) is intended amongst other things to increase these. There are clear benefits in increasing the flow of funds through government channels, but donors providing DBS understandably expect to influence the national budget and policy-making, which tend to diminish ownership, and if large proportions of the national budget (or even, in the case of sector budget support, of the education budget) are not coming from the country?s own taxpayers then accountability to the people is also diminished.
A recent evaluation of budget support (IDD and Associates 2006) for the donor agencies found that DBS has been an effective instrument, for example in strengthening harmonisation and public financial management, and results in increased expenditure on basic services, especially education and health, but that the expansion in services has ?often been accompanied by a deterioration in quality? (p. S7). While providing the funding through central government strengthens central ownership, this tends to decrease the effectiveness of the funding at the level of service delivery, the school. Experience globally has shown that government bureaucracy can result in delays and the diminishing of funds as they pass through the different administrative layers, and there is a tendency for civil servants to want to use the funds which are available for the benefit of themselves ? through activities such as training courses, study tours and workshops ? rather than facilitating the direct use of the funds at the level of the school where they are likely to have the greatest impact on teaching and learning. What appears to be best practice at the central level may prove to be far from this at the local level.
DBS is a convenient mechanism for one central government to provide aid to another central government, but the provision of education is often far removed from the central government ? either because schools depend on local authorities such as districts, or because schools are semi-autonomous, or because schools are non-state ? run by communities, by faith-based organisations or by the private sector. (Indeed, at a time when the pressure to increase access to education is greater than governments can cope with even when funding is increased, much more needs to be done both to facilitate non-state provision and to increase its quality.) As an earlier analysis of the relationship between aid modalities and what is known about effective implementation of education reform indicated (Smith 2005), while DBS may enhance government capacity, it is unlikely to have much direct impact on school capacity, which is essential for successful education change. Best practice for education requires, therefore, that an appropriate balance is maintained between aid modalities which result in expanded services and those which will directly build capacity for delivering quality teaching to the learners.
The very serious efforts by donor countries and recipient governments to identify best practice in the use of aid funds must be strongly encouraged. Sector-wide approaches and the emphasis on capacity building for policy, planning and financial management have indeed had a positive impact. But in the education sector this must be balanced by the best possible use of aid funds directly to create sustainable high quality service delivery where it really matters, that is in the schools.
References
IDD and Associates (2006) Evaluation of General Budget Support: Synthesis Report. International Development Department, University of Birmingham
OECD (2005) Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. High Level Forum, Paris, March 2005
Smith, H (2005) ?Ownership and capacity: do current donor approaches help or hinder the achievement of international and national targets for education??. International Journal of Educational Development, 25(4) (Summarised in NORRAG News, 33)
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