a development agenda to improve education

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A Development

Agenda

to

Improve

Education:

A

Critical Look at Issues and Challenges

Vicente Paqueo

Aniceto Orbeta and Jose Albert

Philippine Institute of Development Studies SymposiumSeptember 28, 2011



Objectives

• To take a critical look at Philippine education

issues and

challenges

• To suggest an education R&D agenda for

evidence‐based decision‐making

• To get your feedback on how we can improve

our take on the education sector and sharpen

the proposed

R&D

agenda



Motivation

• The PIDS’s selection of the theme “Return to ABCs”

for its

current

series

of

symposia

recognizes

the

importance of the PH education challenges.

• Education is key to rapid, inclusive and sustainable

economic growth and development. It is – A

strategic

factor

in

the

country’s

ability

to

survive

global

competition and take advantage of its opportunities

– A key contributor to good governance and the

development of a well‐functioning democratic state

• But to

realize

its

promise,

the

education

sector

needs

to resolve certain fundamental challenges



Education challenges

• Huge and

growing

number

of

children

prematurely

out of school (2.9 million children aged 5‐15 years

old in 2008) ……

• Delay in achieving the universal primary educationtarget,

a key

factor

in

the

continuing

growth

of

out

of

school youth (OOSY)

• Poor quality education, reflected in rote learning and

low student

achievement

• Inequality in access and quality of education(gender, rural‐urban, poor‐nonpoor, ethnicity)

•

Need for

a stronger

and

deeper

talent

pool,

supported by a world class university. ….

• Ineffective, inefficient and inequitable use of education resources (e.g. low rate of DepEd budget

execution; untargeted

TESDA

scholarships)



Why progress has not been faster?

•

The

challenges

are

longstanding

problems;

little

progress

has

bnachieved despite

countless

reform

efforts

likely

due

to:

• Hubris and failure to prioritize: Trying to do

everything despite binding resource &

absorptive capacity

constraints

• Failure to institute appropriate incentive

structures and social accountability mecha‐

nisms supportive of results achievement

• Instability of

reform

efforts

due

to: (i)

inability

to

allow

innovations

to

reforms to take root and scale up; and (ii) failure to learn and apply lessons

learned from past education reform and policy mistakes

• lack of accurate, timely, and coherent data bases for evidence‐

based policy‐making, performance monitoring, and social accountability

• Others: rapid population growth, elite bias and elite capture of the

reform agenda (K‐12)



Framing the

education

research

and development issues



The traditional production function

view

InputsTechnology

Curriculum

Outputs

Outcomes

Teachers

School heads

Classrooms

Materials

Equipment

Pedagogical techniques

Information technology

State of knowledge

School enrollment

Student achievement

•Reading, writing, math

•Vocational skills

•etc



The contemporary

institutional

view

Inputs

TechnologyInstitutions

Outputs

Outcomes

Decision processes

Rules of

the

game

•Laws, regulations & norms

•Curriculum

•Public versus private provision

Distribution of power & responsibilities

Structure of

incentives

and

accountability



What do we know about the role of

institutional factors?

• Institutional factors facilitate or impede the translation of inputs into outputs and outcomes

•

Well functioning

organizations

embed

in

their

culture

performance accountability, incentives and sanctions, and

good alignment of power, responsibility and information

• It is a huge challenge to establish a culture of highly

accountable,

strongly

motivated

and

properly

empowered

staff – Impact studies of decentralization interventions have had mixed

results, depending on the details of their design and

implementation

– In the Phil, fortunately, the TEEP experiment unmistakably

shows that

empowering

schools

did

significantly

improve

outcomes

– Still, there is no evidence that decentralization of education

responsibility to LGUs would necessarily improve education

outcomes



The decentralization issue

•Concerns

about

management

capacity

of

LGUs

and

lower

level stakeholders have stymied education decentralization.

• This concern, though legitimate, needs to be revisited and

weighed against the detrimental effects of elite bias and

elite capture

of

centrally

driven

reforms.

• Several questions need to be addressed here:

– What responsibilities and powers can be sensibly

decentralized

to which

level

of

stakeholders

(NGAs,

LGUs,

community, etc )? And at what pace?

– Could management capacity concerns be overcome by

performance‐based decentralization, anchored on school‐

based management

(SBM)

and

the

TEEP

experience?

…..

– What would be the features of such strategy?

– What is the impact of LGU decentralization: what works and

does not work and under what conditions?



The performance accountability issue

• A culture of accountability for results is largely absent; instead we have a culture of impunity. …….

• Demand for social accountability, however, is growing

and needs

to

be

addressed.

• But there are challenging design and information

issues –

as

indicated

by

studies

showing

mixed

empirical

results,

which depend on design and implementation details

• Testing and evaluation of alternative social accountability approaches and designs, therefore, are

needed. These

should

include

ways

of

– strengthening the voices of communities and parents and

their ability to vote with their feet

– and improving transparency



Testing new forms of transparency and community power



The incentive structure issue•

At the

heart

of

high

performance

systems

is

a supportive structure of incentives embedded

implicitly or explicitly in their rules, norms and

tradition

•The

Philippine

education

system

is

characterized

by

a weak incentives structure, compounded by lack of

accountability

– Salary increases are provided regardless of performance.

– Bad teachers

hardly

get

sanctioned.

– Budget allocations to schools and districts do not reward

results.

– Mediocrity is inadvertently protected and rewarded by

current laws

and

regulations.

• Despite its recognized importance as a driver of performance, there is no consensus on how to raise

student and teacher motivation ……



More on issue of incentives . . .

• Performance incentives

appear

feasible

and

can

significantly impact on student achievement according to some studies.

• But the empirical results are mixed, depending

on what is being rewarded and other details of the incentive schemes.

• There also have been unintended consequences(teaching to the test and cheating) ……

•

Clearly, more

R&D

studies

are

needed on

the

design and impact of performance‐based

incentives, including their internalization for

sustainability.



Testing carrots

and

sticks



The mismatch issue

• Mismatch is considered a key issue by top education

officials. They noted that – Tertiary graduates of certain courses are not being absorbed

by the

labor

market,

while

job

offers

for

workers

with

specific qualifications are unfilled.

– High school graduates are unable to take advantage of good

jobs due to lack of technical skills

• The knee

‐ jerk

response

has

been

to

advocate

measures ranging from improved manpower planning

to getting children to learn specific vocational skills.

•

Manpower planning,

however,

despite

its

surface

appeal has limited value in a rapidly changing world: demand and supply for specific work skills are difficult to predict (the story of the 60s, Taleb’s Black Swan and Fooled by

Randomness, the

current

nursing

story)



More on mismatch issue . . .

• An alternative strategy is to keep DepEd focused

on the development of good general educationto expand and deepen the pool of highly

trainable, disciplined,

and

adaptable

workers

…...

• Good basic general education is still the safer bet in a changing and uncertain world – and

probably more

profitable

in

the

long

run

……

• The question is: Beyond improving general education, what more can the Government do to

efficiently support

the

transformation of

the

Philippines as a globally competitive provider of high‐value knowledge‐based services?



Education cycle, curriculum, time on task

and

other

issues• Filipino children are overburdened: not enough time to learn

deeply basic ideas and skills due to curriculum congestion and

limited time on task …..

•

K‐12

reform

seeks

to

address

the

above

issue,

but

the

K

‐12

reform

itself is being questioned by critics as to its urgency, priority and

impact on equity. ........ The fear is that

– inequity will likely worsen, as about 65 percent of Filipino children do not go

to tertiary education at all; and

– implementation of BESRA and other more urgent reforms is likely to sufferfor lack of management focus and spreading limited resources thinly (The

hope for an educ allocation of 5% of GDP is unlikely to be realized)

• Other issues

– Gender disparity

and

the

delay

in

the

enrollment

of

6 year

olds

need

to

be

resolved urgently to raise the elementary NER closer to 100% by 2015.

– Similarly, there is a need to urgently address the issue of ethnic disparity

and to monitor and assess regularly the impact of the MLE policy



K‐12 reform: how about the low‐income children?



Specific issues in higher education

• Both public

and

private

higher

education

institutions

(HEIs)

vary

widely in quality; and many are of low quality.

• The HE rate of return (RR) for an average graduate is high and

rising, reflecting increasing scarcity of educated workers relative

to demand.

• But these rates likely differ widely across HEIs – The fear is that some of them are so bad (e.g. zero passing rates in

professional exams) that studying in them may not be worth the cost

to

the

parents

and

the

public

subsidy. – But this also means very high RR for others, implying the possibility of

an expanded self ‐sustaining student loan system

• There is lack of reliable info on the quality of individual HEIs

and their economic returns, making informed choice of HEIs

and courses

difficult,

causing

mismatches

and

market

imperfections.

• Quality indicators used in assessing HEIs are input‐based w/o

external validation against earnings and other desired

outcomes. Validation

for

benchmarking/accreditation

is

needed.



More HEI issues . . .

• On the whole, the Government needs a coherent vision and

strategy for meeting

the

core

challenges

of

higher

education.

• Its approach to sector development has been full of contradictions. For example, government wants –

some world

class

HEIs,

yet it

does

not

provide

sufficient

resources

for the development of at least one of them (UP)

– higher quality HEIs; yet it tolerates lack of accreditation (only

19%) and proliferation of LUCs; funds a huge number of low

quality SUCs; and puts ceilings on student fees. These factors keep

spending on

quality

improvements

minimal.

– research strengthening, but HEIs’ administrators are unsupportive

– equity, yet it heavily subsidizes better‐off students in public HEIs

due to lack of effective targeting (SUCs subsidy=87% in 2009)

– efficiency, yet

it

follows

an

inefficient

approach

to

providing

high

quality/high return education and equitable access• It fails to ensure an adequate system of scholarships and student loans

• Unit cost of HEIs differ, but are uncorrelated with quality



Where are we, Ched?

CHED

Barriers to enter gud HEIs

Reduce SUC subsidy?



Specific Tech Voc Ed Training (TVET) issues• Low external efficiency: only 34%‐45% of graduates are

employed; only

35.4%

of

them

found

training

useful

• Public TVET policy, institutions and interventions are inefficient due to – Conflict of interest, TESDA acts as regulator and direct training

provider at

the

same

time

– Crowding out of private TVET (declining private share) due to

increased subsidy of public TVIs and the rise of non‐contestable

training arrangements

– Ineffective TESDA scholarships (TWSP with 5.6B no employment impact;

PESFA

with

200M

with

some

employment

impact;

dubious

equity effect due to targeting issue, though PESFA allocates more to

regions with higher poverty incidence).

– Weak monitoring and evaluation capacity, including lack of reliable

and

timely

information

(e.g.

no

official

data

on

TVET

graduates) – Failure to enforce quality standards on TVIs (no data on results of

annual compliance review and action taken; guidelines with no police

powers)

– Lack of incentives and social accountability for the performance of

TESDA and

public

TVIs



TVET

Conflict of interest Little contestability & targeting



summary o propose agen a: r mary an

Secondary Education

Decentralization, Empowerment

and

Social

Accountability

• Analysis of education decentralization – What responsibilities and powers can be sensibly decentralized

to lower level NGAs, LGUs and other stakeholders?

– At what

pace?

Is

it

feasible

and

worth

it

to

link

the

pace

of

decentralization to the performance of lower level stakeholders implicitly rewarding capacity building and results achievement?

• Impact evaluation of the current SBM program and

alternative SBM designs – such as providing regular discretionary grants to schools

(maybe, part of MOOE and partly performance‐based).

• Local experimentation with and evaluation of alternative

mechanisms for social accountability and LGU/school

empowerment – including ways of strengthening the quality and influence of

communities and parents (voice) and their ability to vote with

their feet (e.g. Banta Eskwela scaling‐up).



More R&D proposals – elementary and secondary

Social Accountability,

Incentives,

and

Markets

• Studies on the impact of external stimuli (incentives) on

school and teacher performance

– including testing

of

alternative

forms

of

results

‐based

bonuses

and ways to minimize teaching to the test and cheating.

• Experimentation on how to enhance intrinsic motivation

and evaluation of its impact on the development of a high

performing educational

system

in

the

long

run.

• Systematic empirical analysis of the responsiveness of education supply to CCT demand pressures, identifying

impediments and

testing

Hirschman’s

hypothesis.

• An examination of the educated labor demand‐supply

mismatch: evaluating alternative education strategies and

the role of the price mechanism to address mismatch.



More R&D proposals – elementary and secondaryCurriculum, Time on Task and Educational Disparities

• Empirical analysis of the actual time spent by students and

teachers on specific tasks, the curriculum congestion

problem, and ways of improving student‐teacher time on task

and active learning

• An independent analysis of the K‐12 reform: Are the

additional two years an efficient and equitable way toenable the average Filipino children to prepare themselves for

the

world

of

work

and

global

competition,

considering

…..?• Testing and impact evaluation of promising interventions to

reduce educational disparities (gender, ethnicity, poverty, urban‐rural), including prospective impact assessment of the

K‐

12

and

other

reforms

on

those

inequities• Development of a program to regularly assess the

implementation of the MLE policy and the prospective

evaluation of its impact



Proposed Higher Education R&D Agenda

Big Picture

Policy

and

Strategy

• Development of evidence‐based, analytical framework to

guide the formulation of a coherent public policy on

higher education. This should

– clarify what

the

public

interest in

government

ownership

of

HEIs and accordingly identify priorities and criteria to guide the

public financing of higher education activities. With this

framework•

Development

of

a

rational

system

of

subsidizing

public

HEIs,

linking

their subsidy

to

performance,

and

making

them

more

financially

autonomous

– Re‐balance use of public resources between teaching and

research, between undergraduate and graduate teaching, and

between subsidizing

low

quality

HEIs

and

investing

in

high

value centers of excellence

– Guide education policy makers on the use of markets and

private providers to serve public interest (e.g. public‐private

partnerships)



Proposed Higher Education R&D AgendaRate of Return, Benchmarking and Accreditation

• Estimation of

higher

education

rates

of

return by

type

of

HEIs and analysis of whether public investments in

government‐owned HEIs is worth the subsidy and the

household expenditure

• Development of validated indicators for benchmarking

and accreditation of HEIs (validated against learning

outcomes and estimates of economic return)

•

Development of

a higher

education

accreditation

systemthat rewards membership and compliance with quality

standards (e.g. by allowing qualified HEIs to enroll students

with publicly subsidized vouchers or scholarships)

•Development

and

public

dissemination

of

timely,

disaggregated information on returns to education by HEI and courses completed, HEIs’ quality, and other data

needed for the higher education market to be more

efficient



More R&D proposals . . . Higher Education

Rationalizing Student

Assistance

and

Using

Market

Mechanisms

• Development and testing of ways to make more transparent the

HEIs’ cost, quality and value added to student learning and

potential earning – and ways to encourage competition instead

of fixing

ceilings

of

school

fees.

• Develop, test and evaluate an expanded, more transparent, better targeted, and more competitive system of publicly

financed scholarships and vouchers for poor but deserving

students to

promote

equity

and

efficiency.

• Re‐examine the student loan program and develop ways of strengthening and scaling it up, drawing from international and

local experience.

• Empirical analysis

of

the

distortions

induced

by

government

imposed ceilings on fees (e.g. education quality); and review of the country’s HE price policy and the need for its reform, including the rationalization of socialized pricing in SUCs.

P d TVET R&D d



Proposed TVET R&D agenda

• Develop evidence‐based strategy for re‐structuring TVET policy

and institutional

arrangements to

remove

conflict

of

interest

and improve external efficiency and equity by – Limiting TESDA’s roles to regulation and provision of public

information, including accreditation and enforcement of standards

–

Reducing

crowding

out

of

private

providers by

leveling

the

playing

field between public and private TVIs and making publicly funded

programs contestable

– Adopting a policy explicitly targeting the poor and developing a

system for supporting the CCT beneficiaries’ transition to self ‐

reliance in

line

with

the

Government’s

convergence

policy

– Strengthening monitoring and evaluation capacity to support evidence‐based policy making

• Develop a culture of social accountability and a structure of incentivesthat rewards results‐based performance by testing and evaluating

– promising incentive

schemes

and

sanctions

linked

to

the

results

obtained by TVIs and TESDA and compliance with quality standards

– better targeted and more competitive TVET scholarships and other interventions as to their impact, cost‐effectiveness, and equity,



Conclusions• The

education

sector

is

faced

with

many

important

longstanding challenges

• Past reforms have failed to effectively address those

challenges due to hubris and the country’s failure to deal

squarely and

effectively

with

the

institutional

issues

of

social accountability, incentives structure, empowerment, education finance and targeting.

• There are risks that these issues might not be addressed

squarely and

effectively,

again,

despite

Pnoy’s matuwid nadaan.

• We, therefore, recommend that among the many R&D

suggestions we have mentioned, PIDS should focus largely,

though

not

exclusively,

on

issues

of

prioritization,

performance incentives and social accountability.

• Finally, we end the presentation with a message from the

future …….



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