‘To Get Children Learning, More Money is Necessary But Not Sufficient’: A Side Event of the Global Education Summit: Financing GPE 2021-2025

Many countries have struggled to translate schooling into learning. In response, most reforms aim to finance and provide more educational inputs. However, research from the RISE Programme shows that if you put more money and inputs into a system that is designed for a purpose other than learning, it may not help children learn. This event focuses on identifying and addressing key misalignments that prevent education systems from focusing on learning, paving the way for future investments in education to go much further toward ending the learning crisis.

In this event, we will explore ways of making an education system better aligned for learning.  What are the different parts of an education system that need to work together to deliver learning?  What are common misalignments between these parts of the system? And what tools and approaches does RISE research suggest can overcome these misalignments?

The panel will be chaired by Mary Goretti Nakabugo (Uwezo Uganda, PAL Network, & RELI), who will draw attention to a letter written by frontline practitioners to President Kenyatta and Prime Minister Johnson which highlights the steps leaders need to take to solve the learning crisis beyond finance. Marla Spivack (Building State Capability, Harvard University, & RISE) will present the RISE education systems diagnostic, a tool to identify high-level misalignments that are present in an education system and preventing progress on learning. Leonard Wantchekon (Princeton University, the African School of Economics, & RISE) will focus on the particular misalignments between politicians and communities, and how he is helping to address them in Nigeria through holding “summits” that produce concrete social contracts around education. Vincy Davis (Indian School of Public Policy) will look at how bureaucratic culture and processes are often more aligned with input-based goals rather than learning goals, and how recent reforms in Delhi were able to incrementally shift the bureaucracy away from monitoring and toward motivating and supporting teachers. Finally, Julius Atuhurra (Twaweza East Africa) will focus on the misalignment between curricula, exams and classroom instruction in primary school in Tanzania and Uganda.

Joe DeStefano (RTI) will then facilitate a discussion, drawing connections between these different approaches to addressing system misalignments, and bringing in questions from the audience.

Follow this event on Twitter: #RISEGPEWebinar #RaiseYourHand #GoBeyondFinance #GES2021