Transcript Policy development and monitoring for quality and equity

Policy development and monitoring
for quality and equity in education
Quick report
Equity and quality
• Education systems inherently decreasing
equity?
– Accumulation of disadvantage through various
stages of education
• Quality as excellence?
– Meritocracy not background neutral
Two pillars of education policy
Equity as a component of quality
Focusing on added value of schools
Who are the disadvantaged?
• Equity a new focus of policy
• External incentives for focusing on some groups
more than the others
– E.g. Roma, students with special needs
• But some experience multiple disadvantage,
some inequity invisible
Focus on plurality and diversity
Focus on flexibility of solutions
Focus on the entire system
Data and evidence
• Very limited systematic data
– Data mostly collected through one-time projects and
initiatives
– Sometimes compilation, but work intensive and may not
always be possible
– Problems with relevance
– Problems with longitudinal analysis
– Mostly quantitative data
Make the data bases operational and allow for linkages
Significant investment yes, but essential for long term
policy development
Also qualitative data
Supply of evidence
• Organisation of research/interpretation of data
– Fragmentation – small projects or focusing on isolated problems and stages in
education
– Sometimes
• difficult to do solid research if pressured to deliver neat and simple recommendations
• abused for window-dressing if pressured to do monitoring
• Which disciplinary lenses to interpret the data?
– Not entirely multidisciplinary, domination of psychologists?
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How many sociologists?
How many economists?
How many political scientists/policy analysts?
How many organisational scientists?
– Too much focus on the micro level (learning, classroom interaction)?
OR
– Too little focus on the meso (school, faculty) or macro (system) level
 Pooling of capacity
 Improve multidisciplinarity and focus on all levels
 Explore linkages between levels
Demand for evidence
• Evidence based or intelligent policy development?
– Evidence informing?
• How to increase demand?
• How to communicate this – to the policy makers, to the public?
– Communicative vs. coordinative discourse
– “Reforms can not be successfully marketed unless they promise more than
they can deliver”
– Reform as an extraordinary event which “we have to survive”
• Frog vs. bird perspective
– Individual interests vs. collective interests
– Short-term vs. long-term perspective
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Rethinking overall governance
Promoting and supporting professional accountability
Careful about marketing of reforms
Continuous “fine tuning”, but also beware of reform saturation
Policy process – neat version
• Identification of problems
• Identification of possible solutions
– Discussion of alternatives
• Formulation of policy
– Development of policy instruments and policy linkages
• Implementation
• Monitoring and evaluation
(good policy learning?)
Policy process – not so neat version (1)
• Identification of problems
– Problems = causes
– Causes difficult to identify properly, recall traps in policy
development
– What ends being perceived as a problem also a political matter
• Identification of possible solutions
– Solutions  outcomes
– Problem with guaranteeing that the solution would produce the
desired outcome (not only because of messy implementation)
– Discussion of alternatives not always rational and based on
evidence
– Garbage can approach to policy making – matching problems
and solutions that may not necessarily fit, but which appeared
on the policy makers’ horizon at the same time
Policy process – not so neat version (2)
• Formulation of policy
– Policy instruments may lack coherence
– Policies may not be linked well – neither vertically nor
horizontally
• Implementation
– Top down process, many layers, many actors (with vested
interests)
– Room for interpretation
– Room for “mimicking” implementation
• Monitoring and evaluation
– The lower the level, the more difficult to monitor
implementation – “the truth is in the classroom”
– Beware of window dressing!
– Difficult to monitor and evaluate one single policy due to
complexity of processes and outcomes, as well as overlapping
reforms
Final bird’s eye remarks...
• Yes, SEE is specific
– Many commonalities between countries
– But also specific problems
Careful when policy learning
• But, SEE is also not specific
– Some challenges related to education as such
(imperfect context)
 Try to do the possible (while aiming for the optimal)