Each of the 59 developing countries that joined the Global Partnership for Education has designed education sector strategies endorsed by its local partners. Most of them were based on a thorough assessment of the country education sector’s strengths and weaknesses.
The new GPE funding model approved in 2014 requires countries applying for a program implementation grant to carry out an education sector analysis to support the development or revision of an education sector plan.
This is why GPE partners have updated a decision-making tool to help governments diagnose their systems, generate evidence-based policy dialogue and inform their policy reforms. The revision involved a group of 25 education economists and was possible thanks to the technical and financial support of UNESCO, UNICEF, the World Bank, the Global Partnership for Education Secretariat.
The new “EducationSectorAnalysis: MethodologicalGuidelines” are an update of the methodology developed in 1999 and inspired by economic education analyses. At least 70 Country Status Reports (CSR) on education in more than 40 countries have used these guidelines. The CSRs have been instrumental for the preparation and monitoring of education sector plans and have assisted countries as they accessed funding for their implementation.
10 chapters to analyze the education sector
The guidelines are comprehensive and consist two volumes. The first volume covers six sector-wide thematic areas: context; access; costs and financing; quality, system capacity and management; external efficiency; and equity.
The second volume has a sub-sector focus: early childhood development, higher education, literacy and non-formal education, and technical and vocational education and training.
Each chapter includes:
- A description of the key policy issues to be analyzed
- Practical data collection tools
- Methodologies to process and analyze data
- Qualitative tools such as questionnaires for stakeholder interviews
- Examples of country analyses that include interpretations for policy dialogue and decision making.
Although the guidelines aim to be comprehensive, country contexts vary greatly and thus country teams are encouraged to select the sections relevant to their analysis, specific issues and data constraints. Also when relevant, it is suggested to include a specific chapter on humanitarian conflict (such as recently done in Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo).
Developing national capacities and promoting policy dialogue
The guidelines provide a detailed methodology for analyzing the education sector under the government’s leadership. They will also help to strengthen the capacity of the government teams involved in the sector analysis and promote policy dialogue between the government and its development partners.
As developing countries prepare or update their education sector plans, we hope the Methodological Guidelines will prove to be a useful tool.