@techreport{levy_how_2022, title = {How {Political} {Contexts} {Influence} {Education} {Systems}: {Patterns}, {Constraints}, {Entry} {Points}}, shorttitle = {How {Political} {Contexts} {Influence} {Education} {Systems}}, url = {https://riseprogramme.org/publications/how-political-contexts-influence-education-systems-patterns-constraints-entry-points}, abstract = {This paper synthesises the findings of a set of country studies commissioned by the RISE Programme to explore the influence of politics and power on education sector policymaking and implementation. The synthesis groups the countries into three political-institutional contexts: - Dominant contexts, where power is centred around a political leader and a hierarchical governance structure. As the Vietnam case details, top-down leadership potentially can provide a robust platform for improving learning outcomes. However, as the case studies of Ethiopia, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Tanzania illustrate, all-too-often dominant leaders’ goals vis-à-vis the education sector can veer in other directions. - In impersonal competitive contexts, a combination of strong formal institutions and effective processes of resolving disagreements can, on occasion, result in a shared commitment among powerful interests to improve learning outcomes—but in none of the case studies is this outcome evident. In Peru, substantial learning gains have been achieved despite messy top-level politics. But the Chilean, Indian, and South African case studies suggest that the all-too-common result of rule-boundedness plus unresolved political contestation over the education sector’s goals is some combination of exaggerated rule compliance and/or performative isomorphic mimicry. - Personalised competitive contexts (Bangladesh, Ghana, and Kenya for example) lack the seeming strengths of either their dominant or their impersonal competitive contexts; there are multiple politically-influential groups and multiple, competing goals—but no credible framework of rules to bring coherence either to political competition or to the education bureaucracy. The case studies show that political and institutional constraints can render ineffective many specialised sectoral interventions intended to improve learning outcomes. But they also point to the possibility that ‘soft governance’ entry points might open up some context-aligned opportunities for improving learning outcomes. In dominant contexts, the focus might usefully be on trying to influence the goals and strategies of top-level leadership. In impersonal competitive contexts, it might be on strengthening alliances between mission-oriented public officials and other developmentally-oriented stakeholders. In personalised competitive contexts, gains are more likely to come from the bottom-up—via a combination of local-level initiatives plus a broader effort to inculcate a shared sense among a country’s citizenry of ‘all for education’.}, language = {en}, urldate = {2023-04-13}, institution = {Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE)}, author = {Levy, Brian}, month = dec, year = {2022}, doi = {10.35489/BSG-RISE-WP_2022/122}, } @techreport{andrews_getting_2021, address = {Oxford}, type = {{RISE} {Working} {Paper}}, title = {Getting {Real} about {Unknowns} in {Complex} {Policy} {Work}}, url = {https://riseprogramme.org/publications/getting-real-about-unknowns-complex-policy-work}, abstract = {As with all public policy work, education policies are demanding. Policy workers need to ‘know’ a lot—about the problems they are addressing, the people who need to be engaged, the promises they can make in response, the context they are working in, and the processes they will follow to implement. Most policy workers answer questions about such issues within the structures of plan and control processes used to devise budgets and projects. These structures limit their knowledge gathering, organization and sense-making activities to up-front planning activities, and even though sophisticated tools like Theories of Change suggest planners ‘know’ all that is needed for policy success, they often do not. Policies are often fraught with ‘unknowns’ that cannot be captured in passive planning processes and thus repeatedly undermine even the best laid plans. Through a novel strategy that asks how much one knows about the answers to 25 essential policy questions, and an application to recent education policy interventions in Mozambique, this paper shows that it is possible to get real about unknowns in policy work. Just recognizing these unknowns exist—and understanding why they do and what kind of challenge they pose to policy workers—can help promote a more modest and realistic approach to doing complex policy work.}, language = {en}, number = {21/083}, urldate = {2021-12-16}, institution = {Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE)}, author = {Andrews, Matt}, month = nov, year = {2021}, doi = {10.35489/BSG-RISE-WP_2021/083}, } @techreport{spivack_applying_2021, title = {Applying {Systems} {Thinking} to {Education}: {The} {RISE} {Systems} {Framework}}, shorttitle = {Applying {Systems} {Thinking} to {Education}}, url = {https://riseprogramme.org/publications/applying-systems-thinking-education-rise-systems-framework}, abstract = {Many education systems in low- and middle-income countries are experiencing a learning crisis. Many efforts to address this crisis do not account for the system features of education, meaning that they fail to consider the ways that interactions and feedback loops produce outcomes. Thinking through the feedback relationships that produce the education system can be challenging. The RISE Education Systems Framework, which is sufficiently structured to give boundaries to the analysis but sufficiently flexible to be adapted to multiple scenarios, can be helpful. The RISE Framework identifies four key relationships in an education system: politics, compact, management, and voice and choice; and five features that can be used to describe these relationships: delegation, finance, information, support, and motivation. This Framework can be a useful approach for characterising the key actors and interactions in the education system, thinking through how these interactions produce systems outcomes, and identifying ways to intervene that can shift the system towards better outcomes.}, language = {en}, urldate = {2021-12-16}, institution = {Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE)}, author = {Spivack, Marla}, month = may, year = {2021}, doi = {10.35489/BSG-RISE-RI_2021/028}, } @techreport{pellini_political_2021, title = {A {Political} {Economy} {Analysis} {Framework} for {EdTech} {Evidence} {Uptake}}, copyright = {All rights reserved}, institution = {The EdTech Hub}, author = {Pellini, Arnaldo and Nicolai, Susan and Magee, Arran and Sharp, Sam and Wilson, Sam}, month = feb, year = {2021}, }