NN47, April 2012
Value for Money in International Education: A New World of Results, Impacts and Outcomes
NN43 Policy Brief
By NORRAG
NORRAG NEWS has always been interested in critical analysis of major conferences, global summits and international policy papers. The 43rd issue of NORRAG NEWS critically reflects on global development reports, in particular those with a focus on education and training. These have lately considerably increased in number since the earliest version in early 20th century, mainly being compiled by (commissions of) multilateral and bilateral agencies, NGOs and individual nations. With the upcoming MDG target year of 2015, this is a timely topic to reflect on.
Specifically, NORRAG NEWS 43 explores how useful the reports have been to global education development. Leading questions in this respect are: Who are the real targets of this battery of reports? How do these reports impact on academic thinking and policy? Can they influence country priorities? Do they alter national targets or goals?
The contributors highlight a number of challenges which these reports face. How does the vast amount of data and analysis contained in the reports actually get filtered into national ministries, national policy, and national Universities? How can one balance and relate the global situation – whether on HIV AIDS, literacy, skills development, or school quality – to the situation in particular countries? Another challenge is the sound-bite – what can be said very tersely for the world as a whole? And, does the search for the global undermine the qualitative understanding of the local or the national?
In general, there is consensus that, even if some of the global development reports reinvent the wheel, they do help to keep issues high on the agenda over time. The primary purpose of the reports is to provide the knowledge base for change, while not relieving other bodies of their responsibility for policy action. Especially the “big reports” do matter and in a number of countries governments are structuring their budgets and policies directly around the significance of these reports, and by what these reports take as “best/good practice”. The reports can stimulate forward-thinking policy debates in a large number of developing countries. They also have greatly influenced the evolution of the vocabulary of education development, which in turn has stimulated discourse and debate and evolution of policy and funding priorities in many countries and regions.
Differences have been noted in the level of detail in the reports, which is sought by different readers. Some authors note that very few international reports are widely read in detail except by academics and graduate students. Policy makers often tend to read executive summaries, league tables and various factual sections such as statistics, tables and graphs and use this as the basis for their (funding) policy, practice and related reforms. The league tables are particularly interesting to policy makers since judgment can be made on the local progress relative to other regions. Similarly, global development targets (e.g. OECD-DAC International Development Targets and MDGs) are often valuable for advocacy.
Critical notes regard the reliability of the data in the reports and doubts about the impact of some of the reports. Despite the huge volume of data that is presented, data are not always everywhere equally available in comprehensive form. For instance, the GMR may be a useful monitoring tool to assess national and global progress towards EFA goals, but the degree to which it can monitor is limited by the availability of data.
Also hard facts about the impact of reports are very scant. In general, there is not a great deal of evidence about how evidence influences policy and practice.
The issue of how the reports are prepared and presented is commented upon by several authors. First of all, most reports are voluminous, they require a high level of understanding and are only accessible to a very restricted audience. Second, in most cases a multiple audience is envisaged which does not contribute to a clear focus in presentation. Some major reports with valid recommendations have not received their intended impact because the presentation and follow-up strategies have been inadequate.
Sometimes reports do not directly serve the agenda of the target audience of the reports, even though they may also coincidentally and unintendedly contain some valid recommendations but aim at strengthening the position of the institution from which the reports are issued. For instance, the Phelps-Stokes Commission report on Education in Africa, made as far back as 1922 was highly influenced by political and racial motivations although it did focus on a theme that is valid and topical even today.
Since the reports are often lengthy, they often appear both in summary form and full versions. Sometimes fact sheets, press releases, videos, power-point presentations and background papers are also published and made available via the internet. However, a paradox exists in that while the development reports and all related annexes contain huge quantities of data and analyses, the sheer volume of the information and need for processing and distillation obstructs the qualitative analysis that readers need to make in order to make the information useful to their direct work.
What transpires form the articles is that the reports discussed are (potentially) valuable to various constituencies but that their effectiveness could be enhanced if certain measures and precautions are taken. Apart from improvements in presentation there is a call for improvement of national information systems and annual reporting, since without national level data, comparability of progress at the international level will remain obstructed.
Nations need to conduct critical and objective analysis of global reports, recognizing the politics behind the report, but being able to look beyond them and glean the valid and valuable points and solutions presented. In addition, nations should be cautious in adopting other national policies lock, stock and barrel since the cultural and political context can determine the chance of success of a policy in a particular setting or the conclusions drawn and recommendations made in a particular report.
Finally, more engagement is needed from southern experts in the production of the reports, which would enhance the probability that data are relevant and that analyses would be diffused and communicated to the ultimate stakeholders.