Social accountability imperative to a decent education system

Monday, September 08, 2008

Oxford University's Dr David Johnson says that without a strong level of local accountability, education in developing countries will not see its quality increase

There is little doubt that education is an important contributor to human development. In economic terms, more schooling results in a qualitatively better labour force and, in turn, higher lifetime incomes. Further, a more educated society is more likely 'to translate into higher rates of innovation, higher overall productivity and faster introduction of new technology' (UNESCO, 2005:41). But, with few exceptions, the state of education in developing countries is pitiable. Despite the successes of the international campaign for 'Education for All'¹, many children in the developing world remain out of school. For those who do attend, less than two-thirds reach the final primary grade and of these only half obtain basic literacy and numeracy skills (Verspoor, 2008). Little wonder, given the conditions under which teaching and learning take place.

I have recently carried out a baseline survey of schools in Nigeria² (Johnson, Hsieh and Oniborn, 2007), and found, not dissimilar to other countries in the developing world in which I have carried out similar studies, that many schools are in areas that are difficult to reach and are not served by a reliable form of transport. Consequently, many children, and indeed some teachers, often walk long distances to and from school. The schools themselves are, by and large, in a grim state of disrepair. Where school buildings exist, they are rarely maintained and as such, pose a threat to the safety of children and teachers. Many are simply unusable. In some cases, class sizes are so large, some might argue as a result of the considerable momentum towards achieving Education for All (Avalos, 2000), that teaching takes place in the open air.

To make matters worse, a significant number of teachers in developing countries are unmotivated (Bennell and Akyeampong, 2007), in part because of the difficult environments in which they work, the fact that they are poorly compensated, and because incentives are few and far between. Teacher earnings are poor and many find it hard to maintain a reasonable standard of living (Hedges, 2002; Tekleselassie, 2005). Commonly, teachers maintain a household of four to five people on less than US$2 a day. It is also broadly the case that teacher salaries have declined over time, relative to other professional groups, and it is estimated that they have fallen by over half in real terms since the mid-1990s. Teacher pay frequently arrives late, or not at all. Little wonder then that many teachers in the developing world engage in other forms of work to make ends meet. In urban areas, it is not unusual for teachers to earn additional income through private tuition, and in rural areas, they commonly sell cakes and sweets to their pupils during breaks (UNESCO, 2005).

Apart from the problems endemic to its management and delivery, education in the developing world has also been affected by the fragility of political systems. Violent conflict in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Uganda, southern Sudan, and Angola, to name a few, has had devastating consequences on the state of education in Africa. According to Buckland (2005), some schools in Angola will not be usable for decades because they are in areas where the costs of clearing unexploded mines are prohibitive. More than two-thirds of the teachers in primary and secondary schools in Rwanda were either killed or fled, and schools were left with hardly any trained or experienced teachers.

This rather bleak thumbnail sketch of the quality of education in developing countries highlights the need for urgent action on several fronts. Indeed, many governments, sometimes with the support of development agencies, have prioritised the regeneration of schools and are taking active steps to raise the status of the teaching profession, increase teacher incentives, and the supply of teaching and learning materials to schools – this is to varying degrees of success. But, in recent years, we have seen a notable shift away from 'inputs' to the proliferation of newly emerging initiatives designed to make public servants more accountable for the quality of the public services they provide.

There is evidence from a number of developing countries that the delivery of education as a public good can be drastically improved when citizens are better informed and more active in monitoring front line services. Sadly, the dismal state of education described above is plainly visible in many communities, but it is often the case that people simply do not know what their rights are and what claims they can legitimately make in public. Parents expect educational officials to serve the public interest in a fair and efficient manner but traditional approaches to enforcing accountability have not always been effective. However, a number of innovative ways have emerged through which ordinary citizens and civil society organisations hold public authorities accountable for their decisions, conduct, performance and actions (Sirker, 2006).

When a Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) uncovered a high degree of financial leakage in Uganda, the central government broadcast through radio information on the monthly transfers of funds from central government to school districts. It also published these figures in newspapers. In addition, primary schools were asked to post information of the inflow of funds to schools in a public place in the school. The objective of this campaign was to promote transparency and increase public sector accountability by giving citizens access to information that allowed them to understand and examine the workings of capital grants to primary schools (Reinikka and Svensson, 2004). The campaign achieved a dramatic result in which leakage was reduced from 78% to 20% in under two years and a removal of 15,000 'ghost' teachers from the payroll. The Ugandan case is an example of a cost-effective policy that helped to demystify the process by which money is made available to local schools. By encouraging a flow of information, local communities were able to take action.

There are numerous other examples of social accountability where ordinary citizens have held public authorities to account for their decisions, performance and actions. 'Participatory budgeting' is one such initiative. The best example of participatory budgeting is found in Porte Alegre in Brazil. There, Participatory Budget Councils, composed of delegates from civil society groups such as neighbourhood associations, were formed to work in collaboration with municipal councils and government representatives to formulate and monitor local budgets. As a result, between 1989 and 1996 the number of children in schools doubled. Over 80 Brazilian cities are now following the Porte Alegre model.

Another example of social accountability is 'performance monitoring'. A good example of performance monitoring is the use of 'scorecards' through which citizen judge the performance of public servants. Such scorecards can be produced at both community and more macro levels. The first example of citizen report cards was found in Bangalore in India. These stimulated civil society activism and many more groups became involved in monitoring public agencies. Formerly apathetic public institutions have begun to react to citizens' concerns and many have reviewed their service delivery mechanisms. At the same time, public awareness on the issue of service quality has been significantly increased. Report cards as a form of civil society performance monitoring have been replicated in many other Indian cities and are routinely used for the monitoring of education and other services in the Philippines, Kenya and South Africa.

We are left asking the question, what promise does social accountability and transparency initiatives hold for improving the quality of education in developing countries? From the brief review above, it seems that social accountability and transparency initiatives have achieved dramatic results in the improvement of education and other services in several developing countries. Though PETS, participatory budgeting and performance monitoring are different in their design, importantly, they all contain the element of providing necessary information to communities and civil society about their entitlements, and they also invite communities to act and to take responsibility for the management and improvement of public service delivery.

We must, of course, be always wary of the 'one size fits all' syndrome, and act with caution in the transference of models or initiatives from one context to another. In the initiatives described above, the relative ease with which communities can be, or want to be, engaged lies at the heart of their success.

1 The Education for All campaign was launched at an education conference involving many heads of state in Jomtien in 1990. It was reaffirmed at a similar conference in Dakar in 2000
2 The study was carried out on behalf of the UK Department for International Development and the World Bank References

Avolos B (2000). Policies for teacher education in developing countries. 'International Journal of Educational Research', 33, 457-474.
Bennell P and Akyeampong K (2007). Teacher motivation in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. London. DFID.
Buckland P (2005). 'Reshaping the future: education and post-conflict reconstruction', Washington. World Bank.
Hedges J (2002). The importance of posting and interaction with the education bureaucracy in becoming a teacher in Ghana. 'International Journal of Educational Development', Vol. 22, 353-66.
Johnson D, Hsieh J, and Oniborn F (2007). A baseline study of the conditions of teaching and learning, and learning outcomes in Nigeria. Unpublished Research report, Cambridge, Cambridge Education Limited.
Sirker K (2006). General Social Accountability Concepts and Tools, World Bank Institute.
Reinikka R and Svensson J (2004). Information and Voice in Public Spending. World Bank Development Research Group.
Tekeleselassie A A (2005). Teachers' career ladder policy in Ethiopia: an opportunity for professional growth or 'a stick disguised as a carrot?' 'International Journal of Educational Development', 25, 4, 618-36.
UNESCO GMR (2005). 'The quality imperative', Paris, UNESCO.
Verspoor A (2008). In D Johnson. The changing landscape of education in Africa. Oxford. Symposium Books.