NN40, May 2008
Education for Sustainable Development? Or The Sustainability of Education Investment? A Special Issue
NORRAG Survey 2007: Summary of the Findings and Recommendations
By Robert Palmer, NORRAG
Email: Rob.Palmer@norrag.orgBackground
As of May 2008 there are 2,060 NORRAG members worldwide. Between mid-November 2007 and mid-January 2008 an online survey instrument was used to capture the opinion of NORRAG members. Just less than 20% of all NORRAG members responded to this online survey. Below is a summary of the main findings and recommendations arising out of this survey.
Members by region
Between February 2007 and February 2008 NORRAG membership has grown substantially in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) (from 205 to 383), East Asia/ Pacific (from 181 to 353), Europe and North America (from 531 to 982). Nonetheless, efforts should continue to expand readership in these regions. NORRAG membership remains low in the Middle East / North Africa (41 readers), Central Asia/ Russia (13), and Latin America/ Caribbean (87). More effort should be made to expand readership of NORRAG News (NN) in these areas. Such efforts might include direct email targeting as well as including in NN more articles from authors of these regions (and articles on these regions). More use of appropriate languages for policy briefs will be initiated.
Members by institution
One of NORRAG?s objectives is ?Critical advocacy of education and training policies and strategies to governments, NGOs and other organizations?. The survey responses suggest that just over a third of NORRAG members (approximately 600 individuals) are from these types of institution and so NORRAG is doing a fair job at directly reaching these groups. Nonetheless, there could always be more effort made to target NGOs, government departments and development agencies. It can also be argued that NORRAG indirectly reaches these groups through the bulk of its members; both academics (35%) and consultants (11%). The percentage breakdown of NORRAG members according to their institutional background is given below:
University (academic) - 35%
University (research student) - 11%
Bilateral aid agency (e.g. government aid agencies - DFID, USAID etc.) - 4%
Multilateral organisation (e.g. UN, World Bank, EU etc.) - 7%
Government department - 11%
Commercial organisation (e.g. private companies) - 1%
Consultancy - 11%
Media (e.g. press, radio, TV, etc.) - 0.3%
NGO or other civil society organisation - 13%
Other - 7%
Use of norrag.org resources
Most members use the NORRAG website to read and download issues of NN when they become available. However, approximately 30% are using the NORRAG website on a regular basis. This means that the NORRAG secretariat should do its best to keep the norrag.org website up to date and make it easier to use. During 2007 there were some updates to the website which have greatly enhanced its usability. A few further changes are underway (including updating the resources section of the website).
How members are using NORRAG News
For over a third of members NN is used to keep them up to date on education and training issues. A further quarter of all members are using NN for research work (both academic and/or consultancy).
? NORRAG should continue to keep members interested in NN by continuing to provide up to date information on education and training issues.
? NORRAG should make it easier for members to share particular articles or issues with their colleagues by creating a link on the norrag.org website that allows members to forward articles/issues to their contacts.
? NORRAG should continue to get authors of articles to provide additional sources of information to readers (web-links, references) so that these can be used for research or teaching purposes. Though not a priority, the NORRAG secretariat might do more to add additional links to articles (in addition to those that the article author adds) that could enable readers to more easily find related documents, websites etc.
Degree to which members consider the objectives of NORRAG are met
NORRAG?s objectives are:
1. Collection, critical analysis, and synthesis of research on education policies and strategies, and on international cooperation.
2. Dissemination of just-in-time information and knowledge on aid policies.
3. Critical advocacy of education and training policies and strategies to governments, NGOs and other organizations.
4. Cooperation with other networks in order to share information, carry out joint programmes, joint efforts in advocacy and strengthen networks.
Members considered that NORRAG has most successfully met Objectives 1 and 2; 89% and 79% respectively of all members considered that NORRAG had been ?very? or ?quite? successful it achieving these objectives.
While most respondents indicated that NORRAG had been ?very? or ?quite? successful in achieving objectives 3 and 4, there were small minorities who indicated the NORRAG had not achieved these objectives; 14% indicated that NORRAG had not been successful in achieving objective 3 and 20% indicated that NORRAG had not been successful in achieving objective 4.
Addressing objective 3 - ?Critical advocacy of education and training policies and strategies to governments, NGOs and other organizations?: Currently NORRAG uses a passive strategy to achieve this objective; it relies on members (including those members from governments, NGOs and development agencies) to pick up the key messages from NN and the policy briefs themselves. NORRAG needs to do more with its ?policy briefs? in order to get the key messages of each issue of NN across to policy audiences. NORRAG should do more to actively target potential members from governments, NGOs, development agencies and other organizations.
Addressing objective 4 ? ?Cooperation with other networks in order to share information, carry out joint programmes, joint efforts in advocacy and strengthen networks?: It is not surprising that about one quarter of NORRAG members feel this objective is not being met since NORRAG currently does not actively promote linkages with other networks. This is an area that needs to be actively addressed by the secretariat. Alternatively NORRAG should not state we are trying to do this. It was an objective because of the original links to ERNESA, ROCARE etc
Topics that urgently need attention
? There appear to be only three strong categories emerging from members: i) TVET (21%); ii) PARTNERSHIP, EDUCATION FINANCING, AID MODALITIES (9%); iii) ACCESS, EQUITY, EQUALITY and QUALITY (9%).
? Future editions of NORRAG News should consider incorporating the above issues.
? Clearly, members have more than one filed of expertise. It would be useful to incorporate this into the NORRAG database.
Should NORRAG offer additional services?
? NORRAG should not (at the current time) organize stand alone conferences. Instead it should continue its strategy of being involved with existing major conferences (e.g. NORRAG co-organised a whole series of panels on a major theme at the 2007 UKFIET Oxford conference). NORRAG should seek further conferences where it might be involved.
? NORRAG should consider organising piggy-back one-day mini conferences that directly precede or come after existing major conferences, like the UKFIET Oxford conference.
? Depending on resources, NORRAG might consider organizing an international conference in collaboration with another network, agency or institution. This had already been done with the Aga Khan Foundation in a meeting in Kenya, and with ERNWACA in a meeting in Bamako. These would be quite costly however (in terms of time needed by the secretariat for organizing).
? NORRAG should help to organize more meetings at the regional level. But NORRAG should not put on such meetings alone. Again, it should work with other networks, agencies or institutions to co-organize such regional events.
? The financial implications are obvious; if the NORRAG secretariat becomes more involved in co-organizing regional meetings or international conferences the workload of the secretariat, and hence the resources needed, would increase.
? At present, NORRAG cannot offer financial support to people to attend NORRAG events.
The NORRAG Networking Tool
15% of people said that they thought the tool was either very useful (10%) or quite useful (5%). Over half of all respondents considered the tool to be potentially very useful though they had not used it yet. About a quarter of all respondents did not know the tool existed.
? NORRAG should do more to publicize the networking tool.
? NORRAG needs to ensure that the networking tool is kept up to date. The second round of norrag.org website developments taking place in 2008 will address this issue.
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