Traditional projects in education introduce innovations at the school level, sometimes improving learning in a defined number of schools. The hope is that somehow piloted successes can be replicated or taken to scale. But too often they are not. Dissatisfied with this, donors may choose policy-level interventions that promote resource reallocations, specific policy reforms, and investments in administrative and management capacity to effect system-wide change. But the record of policy reforms having impact on learning at the school level is disappointing. If we fund school-level projects, the challenge lies in how to create policy and institutional reforms that support replicable school-level success. If we support policy-level interventions, the challenge lies in how to ensure that national reforms lead to changes in the day-to-day practice of schools. Both approaches require effective programs of what we call reform support. Why is reform support needed? Ten years ago USAID published the Education Reform Support (ERS) series to answer just this question. ERS recognizes that the existing arrangements in the education sector—urban-rural inequities, management environments skewed by bureaucratic concerns, teaching improvements constrained by union prerogatives—are not accidental. Powerful political forces benefit from, shape, and defend the current situation. Changes within the system cannot realistically be implemented without first dealing with the preexisting institutional environment. Altering that environment means recognizing who stands to win or lose from pro-posed reforms, and what incentives signal them to either work for change or defend the status quo. The literature supporting such an understanding of education reform is rich. ERS draws on that literature and goes one step further to outline the tools and techniques for sup-porting and strategically managing the reform process.

A key component of educational change is that it is often overlooks is that it is fundamentally an emotional process for teachers (Rogers, 2003). When change in instructional practice is expected of teachers, their response is usually varied; mostly determined by their environment (e.g., school, social network, etc.) and personality characteristics (Kahneman, 2011). An education system provides different inputs during this educational change with the hope that teachers can implement new instructional practices effectively. This input might include ongoing teacher support and accountability mechanisms. To better understand how teachers respond to educational change, we conducted research in coordination with Early Grade Reading programs in Tanzania and Nepal. The study used an explanatory mixed-methods approach to explore the variability of teacher response to education change, and how the education system mechanisms influenced this change. A key component of the research framework was an alignment of behavioral science and systems thinking, presenting a novel lens to uncover perspectives not usually researched. It was concluded that some teachers were able to apply a rational approach to change aligned with Guskey’s model of teacher change (1986), while other teachers implemented the new early grade reading curriculum while retaining key aspects of their prior default pedagogical approach. The accountability and support system focused on teacher compliance for curriculum delivery, the most observable and correctable aspect of classroom instruction. For teachers in schools with low student achievement and gain, Finally, most teachers were unaware of the actual performance levels of their students, believing that most or all of their students would meet systems expectations of reading proficiency by the end of grade two. Leveraging theoretical perspectives from Fullan (2015), Rogers (2003), and Kahneman (2011), this study concludes with recommendations of the most promising avenue of research regarding how to address educational systems change.

This presentation focused on learning through play-based pedagogies in Kenya, Rwanda and Ghana. Some key findings discussed are: (1) Teachers in general support the concept of play and employing play-based teaching in the classroom, but far fewer are okay with students directing their own learning. (2) In practice, teachers spend the most time explaining/lecturing and monitoring the class. (3) At midline, significant changes were detected in some aspects of teacher practice in Kenya and Ghana, but overall, the frequency of play-based approaches is low.

The purpose of this formal group panel presentation is to hold an in-depth discussion on USAID’s investments into system strengthening across Asia over the past decade and how these efforts are situated within the broader global move to focus more intentionally and coherently on education system strengthening. The panel will discuss a 2022 empirical research study (the USAID System Strengthening Review, hereafter “the Review”) conducted by two international research organizations for the USAID Asia Bureau which reviews USAID system strengthening work in 11 Asian countries. This Review offers a qualitative evidence-based analysis relevant to the field of comparative and international education (CIE) and analyzes new data collected from a desk review of relevant project documents, reports, and evaluations, key informant interviews, multi-stakeholder survey, and three deep-dive case studies in Nepal, Cambodia, and the Philippines. The group panel will include three presentations on different aspects of the Review and include discussant commentary and critique to elicit group and audience discussion. The first panel presentation discusses a theoretical framework drawn from the RISE Programme (Pritchett 2015 and Spivak 2021) and recent analysis from the Brookings Institution’s Center for Universal Education. The Review’s central research questions are guided by these broader global trends, as well as its own analysis framework developed specifically for this study, discussed in Presentation 3. Conclusions are drawn based on this framework, and the overall discussion in Presentations 2 and 3 considers the context of USAID programming in Asia and how new knowledge provides new insights.

The method used is a historical analysis of the route through which education in Japan and South Korea was framed, and then implemented, in the period starting in 1870 (approximately) in the former and 1945 (approximately but especially after the Korean war) or so in the latter. We analyze both policy intention as in various laws, decrees, and policies, as well as implementation. Debates around equality, the interpretation of Western ideas as filtered by each country’s history, are covered. Original policy documents are analyzed as well as literature on the educational history of both countries, including educational and pedagogical issues. Long-term historical statistics and cliometrics are also employed mostly to compare context and results, rather than methods. South Korea and Japan are chosen because they are, today, high performers both in terms of average achievement and, even more importantly, equality, who went about their reforms with clear intentionality and purpose, and where there were distinct historical pivots that can be pinned to a specific decade or even a single pivotal year. Other high-achieving countries in the West more or less evolved into their systems. Even countries that are often cited as examples for the lower-income countries to emulate, such as Finland, did not set about fundamental reforms with the clear purpose and intentionality that South Korea and Japan did. Side references are made to other cases where intentionality was key, and where there was a clear purpose and bureaucratic organizational effort, such as Prussia. Similar insights are raised through an analysis of speeches and writings of pan-African independence leaders in the 1960s regarding the centrality of education to the nation-building project. Emerging themes that could be of interest to lower-income countries today include: a) the focus on education as fundamental to national purpose, not just as an abstract commitment to numerical goals such as the MDGs and SDGs (without denying the utility of such goals), b) an intense focus on education as a way of redressing class (as in “education should not just be for the samurai class”) and colonization issues (as in “education is key to help us resist undue economic and military power from the West”) from the past, and hence a focus on equality, c) an intense questioning of what could be learned from the West rather than just acceptance and simple borrowing, and d) a relentless focus on bureaucratic efficiency, planning, and investment discipline in terms of not expanding higher levels until lower levels are universalized (for the sake of equality and quality). The focus is largely narrative and qualitative, but historical statistics are used to document the results obtained, such as the very high degree of equality and also efficiency achieved (in fact, signaling how efficiency and equality may have been helpful to each other), whereby even low-income segments of the population benefit from quality education. The contexts, not just the results, are analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively.

This presentation on development of an assessment system under Senegal's new bilingual policy includes an explanation of the bilingual policy in Senegal and plans for development of a national assessment system including use of the ANLAS methodology (Analysis of National Learning Assessment Systems)

Since 2010, USAID has increased funding to partner country institutions by 50% [1], and the current administration’s localization agenda suggests that the government-to-government (G2G) modality may be increasingly frequent. Implementing partners operating in countries with a G2G arrangement, must pay careful attention to the meaning of technical assistance and system strengthening for scale and sustainability. This topic was covered by three presentations in a panel session, including: (1) Driving government ownership of a new language policy through a Government-to-Government partnership: The case of Senegal; (2) Government-to-Government programs to improve student learning: The case of Nepal; and (3) The case of Jordan

Building on past efforts in dropout prevention, the Guatemala Basic Education Quality and Transitions Program seeks to support the Ministry of Education to deploy an open-source mobile application to teachers’ devices that will both facilitate data collection and display easily understandable information on student learning, attendance, and risk of dropout. The application will enable teachers to regularly assess student learning, track daily attendance, and report on key variables that past research has shown to be indicators of risk of dropout, including trauma, economic stress, and other destabilizing conditions. The data will be shared at the school, municipal and ministry level, but only in anonymized and aggregated form, which we expect will reduce teacher fears of punitive accountability. Free community Wi-Fi and school-based internet connectivity will improve teacher’s ability to access the application and other education data, resources and tools while also improving digital inclusion for students to access online learning opportunities and resources. This presentation was delivered by Cynthia del Aguila at the 2023 CIES Annual Conference.

The Kingdom of Jordan’s Human Resource Development (HRD) Strategy mandates the universal provision of kindergarten (KG2) by 2025. The HRD Strategy emphasizes using partnerships between the Ministry of Education (MoE) and other governmental and nongovernmental actors to assure expanded provision of kindergarten services. The strategy further emphasizes the need to improve the quality of kindergarten services, while reaching every child. To fully understand how the MoE can increase access, improve quality, and assure equitable provision of KG1 services, more accurate information is needed, especially about other, as yet unrecognized service providers who may be offering KG or KG-similar services to five-year-old children. The MoE needs a more complete picture of the current provision of KG2 to determine the best strategy to achieve the HRD goal that every child in Jordan receives a high-quality kindergarten experience.

This presentation was given at the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) annual conference in Washington, DC on February 21, 2023. The presentation describes a systematic research method used in USAID's Early Grade Reading Program II (EGRP II) in Nepal to analyze the alignment between the early grade reading curriculum, teacher instruction, and student assessment. The file includes both the presentation slides and the explanatory notes.