Key Lessons Learnt and Conclusions

Governance Theory and Practice in BRN

The delivery approach that emerged in Tanzania in 2013 - 2016; and the actors, institutions and financial instrument it encompasses have subsequently evolved with very different pathways to those originally prescribed in the convening BRN labs held in 2013. Formulaic, ‘3 feet’ detailed education sector delivery plans in Gantt chart format, a hierarchical set of Delivery Units and oversight structures reaching up to the presidential level and aligned state budgeting all struggled for traction in the government and political systems of Tanzania. Was the Malaysian tiger model agile enough and able to adapt to the Tanzanian context?

It is reflective to critique the BRN outcomes with contemporary work on flexible and adaptive programming. Broad calls for good governance or inclusive institutions may well miss the point and a more explicit recognition of political conditions is needed to enable development progress and the adaptability to sustain this progress (Booth & Unsworth 2014, Wild et al. 2015). Clear structural weakness and limitations of BRN’s actual approach in engaging Tanzania’s education system are evident. There was almost no attempt to adjust and course correct the ‘3 feet’ plans that rapidly become out of date, the MDU was emasculated in between two competing line ministries and a parallel reporting structure that was ignored as political elections loomed and a budget crisis limited resource allocation to priority programmes.

The World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law (World Bank 2017) proposes three principles for rethinking governance for development (set out above) These will be expanded in the forthcoming WDR 2018, which will be themed: Realizing the Promise for Education for Development and seek to guide on how education systems can be reformed. At the heart of this philosophy is the premise that tangible and measurable student learning outcomes are the key, primary outcome of a successful education system and other secondary outcomes and structural factors embedded in traditional hierarchical, centralised systems frequently distort reforms and inhibit progress. (Pritchett 2013)

The BRN education programme did indeed place student learning as the highest level targets and goals, seeking large and sustained short term improvement in primary and lower secondary school completion examinations and introducing a requirement for a national assessment of early primary grade literacy and numeracy skills. Whilst the examination pass rates were raised in successive years from the nadir reached in 2012, it can be argued that this was in part due to changes to the examination systems and the filtering out of less capable student who were entered to take the exams.

By contrast the early grade ‘3R’ assessment did provide impetus to reform early primary curricula and teaching practice, with additional financial incentives offered by the Education Programme for Results (EdPforR) disbursement linked indicator that rewarded improvements in average oral reading fluency from the 2013 baseline. The consequent measurable improvements in reading speed and comprehension stands as the most tangible achievement of the BRN period.

BRN and alignment with the WDR 2017 three governance principles

1/ Function over form

The dimensions of commitment, co-ordination and cooperation are cited as core functions of effective institutions, with form (structure) mattering less;- in particular if it is transplanted in from elsewhere or exhibits isomorphic mimicry (Andrews, 2012)

Despite some cynicism in the media, BRN was notably successful in generating a degree of commitment amongst key education actors including local government managers, principals and teachers towards improving learning outcomes. Whilst there was initially confusion as to what exactly should be done, commissioned in-depth research around the BRN school ranking initiative (based on exam performance) did generate a reaction. Stakeholders had limited understanding of the ranking nor agreed with its exam focus, but did express positive views about the concept. It did appear to have a ‘motivation effect’ particularly if performance had declined (Integrity Research, 2016).

Integrity stakeholder citation

In terms of co-ordination and co-operation, whilst there were strong attempt to impose these, through the creation of the Ministerial Delivery Unit, it was not able to operate effectively. In particular the overlapping roles of the Education Ministry (policy and planning, post basic education based Dar es Salaam) and PO-RALG (co-ordination and management of schools and resource allocation, based in Dodoma) led to numerous problems. The lack of co-operation between some senior staff largely thwarted the MDU from ever becoming functional in Dodoma. Co-operation on data was also difficult with parallel BRN specific reporting structures being established, whilst both existing and new data collection systems were not effectively used or rolled out. It was not until the changes of leadership following political elections in 2015 that some of these issues were resolved. It could be argued that these were systemic constraints on all aspects of basic education management, and not just the high priorities activities identified for BRN to take forward.

2/ Capacity and power asymmetries The high level political authority established by Presidential convening and executive power was an essential component in BRN’s drive to bring about meaningful change in the education system. The initial 6-week Lab process that blended government, private sector, donor, CSO and management consultancy approaches was effective in breaking down some of the invisible barriers associated with a highly bureaucratic public administration system.

The initial perceived influence of the MDU and the injection of fresh technical capacity overcame some of the institutional inertia within the education system and provided a challenge to the status quo. Years of donor budget support had evolved complex dialogue structures that were ineffective and disguised education’s systemic weaknesses - it had expanded so rapidly in the 2000’s it was unable to offer even a minimal level of quality in many schools.

The technical assistance (TA) provided to the government to enable the education BRN process was initially resisted by some actors and the decision was taken to embed it in a unit that supported the MoEST education planning department. This partly reflected a challenge to the power of the MDU and BRN structures from some senior officials. The TA team worked pro-actively to support and enable BRN reporting, rapidly diagnose implementation bottlenecks (for example unpaid teacher allowance claims) and to communicate effectively the BRN rationale, activities and incentives to local government officials. Over time they were able to build confidence and trust, especially during the election transition period when a real space for reform opened.

The issue of influential group elite capture and clientelism was evident in obstacles to providing government budget resources to BRN priorities, most notably direct financial transfer to schools. Over a decade earlier, a system to transfer funds for school managed quality inputs was established; ‘capitation grants’ using an enrolment formula with a fixed unit cost. Despite support and regular budgeting from the Ministry of Education, other central level actors effectively blocked its operation through devaluation, opaque and non-transparent two tier fund flows and guidelines that ignored the principle of local grant determination with centralised book purchases that rarely actually happened. This was in direct contravention of local official, union, teacher and community wishes, with a weak justification around local fiduciary risk and macro-economic factors.

Sustained pressure and analytical work to break this impasse unexpectedly came about through direct mandate of the new leadership following the 2015 presidential elections. Within weeks of taking office, monthly direct fund transfers to almost 20,000 schools were established using existing school bank accounts.

3/ Rules and the Role of Law The BRN reform priorities did touch upon a number of areas in which legal or operational guidelines were identified as major constraints and faced considerable resistance and capacity gaps to adjust them. The example above of ‘capitation grants’ is pertinent, with highly regressive funding decisions being made through executive guidelines that circumvented the original policy intent of financing levels and local determination of resource use.

Inefficiencies related to a dysfunctional teacher payroll and management systems were also a major reform initiative that the BRN prioritised, seeking to raise motivation through the settlement of a very large backlog of claims for allowances and promotions. Analysis supported by the TA team was able to clearly identify potential reforms that were considered likely to address ineffective working practices: a survey found 47% of teachers were found to absent from classrooms. (World Bank, 2014).

While this was an area where additional BRN linked finance was made available, local government officials did not verify teacher claims effectively and inflated requests were so extreme that senior central government had to issue sanctions and order repeats of verification exercises. Whilst eventually most of the originally identified backlog were cleared, the legal and financial guidelines governing teacher remuneration have not to date been reformed: teacher transfers or promotions can be approved without funds being available to meet additional costs and the highly centralised payroll management systems is misaligned to the local government cadre needed to effectively implement HR change management.

Public sector reforms to a highly centralised and unionised teacher workforce remain perhaps the most critical element which still needs to be addressed in order to achieve the norm of motivated, trained teachers present and teaching effectively in classrooms (MoEST & PO-RALG, 2016). The technical steps to reform, evolve and improve staff management are largely identified and feasible. However the rules regarding actors including central, local government and school staff are opaque and contradictory and overlapping guidelines inhibit clear roles and responsibilities that the BRN initiative has only started to address.

Following the political transition in late 2015, there has been a major push from the incoming President Magufuli on the rule of law, with major pushes in particular to eliminate ghost workers from the civil service and deal with tax evasion. It will be more challenging for these measures to bring about changes in the education system, not least tackling absenteeism rates from classrooms while teachers are present at the school campus.

Big Results Now! Education lessons for Africa

The importance of education system performance management with sovereign, country led reform programmes, driven by data and a sharp focus on measurable learning outcomes is at the heart of The Learning Generation’s call to action (Education Commission, 2016). However the potential to directly export and replicate such approaches is not a given: ‘Investing in what works is not as simple as finding a reform that has been proven to work elsewhere and importing it…. Decision-makers must carefully consider whether a given reform or intervention addresses the specific needs of a given system and whether it is implementable in the institutional context’ (Pritchett 2013).

The Education Commission have followed up this agenda with a search for ‘pioneer countries’ with the political leadership and drive to move forward down a similar road of education system and domestic financing reform, with external actors and finance to support in a form of compact. The BRN Tanzania education model has been highlighted as a possible example to learn from by the Education Commission, with former President Kikwete one of the Commissioners promoting the potential to perspective pioneer country leaders.

Conclusion

This paper has demonstrated the critical need for flexibility and awareness of the likely space and pace needed to deliver complex education sector reforms. Tanzania’s context of a developing African country, struggling with the competing demands for rapid improvements in both access to education and meaningful learning outcomes is not unusual.

Several successful attributes of the Delivery Approach were clearly in place: the political convening and innovative stakeholder lab process to identify priorities, action plans, results compacts and wide public focused communications on learning and performance. As this critique of common governance principles and adaptive approaches has shown it is very difficult to avoid the many existing political economy constraints that exist. Whilst a robust, short cycle iterative monitoring and course correction approach has only partially been followed, there have been some significant adaptations: in particular around early primary curriculum and a reorientation of teaching practice that has seen significant gains in average kiSwahili oral reading fluency and a drop in complete non-readers in primary school students.

Despite the dropping of the BRN branding and disbandment of the MDU and other BRN structures by the incoming administration in 2016, the ethos and confidence of education sector practitioners within Tanzania has continued to build. The three donor, Education Programme for Results (EPforR) financing framework continues to offer a range of major financial incentives. A revised set of disbursement linked indicators were jointly agreed at the programme’s mid-term, partly to reflect the cessation of the formal BRN Education plan in 2016. These were negotiated with a much greater sense of government buy-in and ownership of the financing instrument than had previously existed, and a growing capacity to manage results based delivery in the Tanzanian education sector.

References

Andrews, M. (2013) The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development

Andrews, M., Pritchett, L. & Woolcock, M. (2012) ‘Escaping Capability Traps through Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA)’, Center for Global Development Working Paper 299

Attfield, I. (2016), ‘Incentivising national scale increases in reading skills in Tanzania’ http://www.heart-resources.org/blog/incentivising-national-scale-increases-readingskills-tanzania/

Barber, M. (2013) ‘The good news from Pakistan: How a revolutionary new approach to education reform in Punjab shows the way forward for Pakistan and development aid everywhere’, Reform

Booth, D. & Unsworth, S. (2014) ‘Politically smart, locally led development’, ODI Discussion Paper, London.

Hymowitz, D. (2016)’Too much science, not enough art’, Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative

Integrity Research (2016) An assessment of attitudes towards the implementation of the School Ranking Initiative (SRI) as part of the Big Results Now in Education Programme.

International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity (2016) The Learning Generation: Investing in education for a changing world

MoEST & PO-RALG (2016) ‘Assessment of the Effectiveness of Teacher Claims Processing Systems and Practices in Tanzania’

Pritchett, L. (2013a) The rebirth of education: Schooling ain’t learning, Washington DC, Centre for Global Development.

Pritchett, L. (2013b) ‘The rebirth of education- why schooling in developing countries is failing; how the developed world is complicit; and what to do next’ Centre for Global Development Brief, 1-4.

RTI (2016) Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) Report for Tanzania