SDI surveys: Turning measurement into momentum for reform

better-prepared teachers, better-managed schools, and incentives that are aligned across the many stakeholders in education reform.

Although it will take time to stabilize education systems, this book has summarized some of the areas most in need of rebuilding and rehabilitation. High-quality primary education is one of the best investments that countries can make to drive productivity gains and economic growth. Ensuring student learning across the whole population should remain a high priority as governments rebuild after COVID-19.

Moving forward, digital technology will play an even more important role in both education and health. The efforts that countries have made in providing continuity with remote learning during the pandemic could carry benefits beyond the current emergency. Appropriately structured online learning can facilitate the acquisition of competencies essential in the changing world of work, such as collaboration and higher-order cognitive skills (Reimers and Schleicher 2020). To shape resilient education systems, countries will need to draw lessons from worldwide experience with distance learning and expand the infrastructure for online and remote learning. In health, telemedicine can, in some cases, help to increase access to higher-quality care in an efficient manner. Finally, in the process of moving toward digital solutions, governments should consider specific disadvantages that some groups face in accessing online platforms, such as gender and disability gaps in access to and use of technology.

Measurement is essential to motivate and guide reforms in health and education, the core pillars of human capital. SDI surveys provide clear, actionable indicators that highlight where health and education systems function well and where fixes are needed. The surveys can help to prioritize reform steps and track the effects of reforms in health and education over time. They also pinpoint areas of reform in governance and accountability that apply to both sectors.

Perhaps most important, SDI results can motivate change by offering an open and transparent assessment of system performance that policy makers and citizens alike can understand. Although reforms often come from the top down, the SDI surveys are premised on the conviction that change can be driven from the bottom up, by engaging citizens to demand high-quality services. The results presented here can function as a call for change in many countries.

As evidenced in the recent World Development Report 2021: Data for Better Lives, the commitment to measurement among policy makers and stakeholders continues to gain force globally (World Bank 2021). The SDI surveys are part of that agenda. Over the next decade, health and education management information systems will likely expand and incorporate a greater range and quality of data, including electronic medical records, student performance data, and more advanced monitoring of facilities. However, the deployment and refinement of these systems will take time, particularly in countries recovering from the pandemic and the ensuing economic crisis. SDI health and education surveys will continue to play an important role by allowing greater breadth of indicators, not as substitutes for but as complements to administrative data. Efforts to ensure compatibility between these two sources will require that surveys be flexible and well adapted to country needs, while also retaining their rigor and international comparability. The performance of health and education systems can be measured in multiple ways, and, by looking at data from all angles and using diverse instruments, policy makers will be able to see the strengths and weaknesses of systems more clearly.

The SDI surveys have expanded geographically in recent years, reflecting the global demand for reliable measurement. SDI efforts in Afghanistan, Armenia, Bhutan, Cameroon, the Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, Indonesia, Iraq, Malawi, Moldova, and Pakistan are ongoing or were recently completed during the production of this book. The health surveys in Bhutan, Guatemala, and Moldova have required substantial adaptation and innovation to suit the new contexts. This adaptation has meant an expanded focus, with methodological innovations to measure more health conditions, including nutrition, mental health, and noncommunicable diseases. The surveys have also become more people-centered, focusing on the experience of providers and patients. Likewise, recent SDI education surveys in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia have brought innovations needed to measure additional aspects of education, such as teachers’ and students’ socioemotional skills, children’s perceptions of their teachers, parents’ school choice and socioemotional conditions, and households’ socioeconomic characteristics. The expanded geography of the SDI surveys will bring both new learning and new challenges, requiring greater flexibility in the survey tool but also opening new areas for innovation.

As COVID-19 vaccines slowly become globally available, students will return to school, and doctors and nurses will resume routine practice. This progressive return to normality will be comforting in some respects. But the crisis has highlighted many fault lines in what was previously considered normal. This crisis has provided an opportunity to reinvigorate and transform systems.