Preface

This publication brings together case studies from the experience of Save the Children in nine countries, four in Africa, three in Asia, and one each in the Middle East and Latin America. It is a contribution to debates on how to improve the quality of primary education in countries where resources are limited, and where problems of schooling link with issues of poverty and social or political disadvantage.

The audience

The people we hope will find something of value in these studies include policy makers and others who work on education issues - in universities, community groups, policy makers in national Ministries of Education, international development agencies, and donor agencies. Representatives from all of these came together at the start of the 1990s in a World Conference on Education for All (EFA) in Jomtien, Thailand, and with great energy launched the Education for All decade, declaring that by the year 2000 all children of school age would be receiving a basic education. Ten years later, at the time these studies are being published, a new series of conferences is taking place, to face up to the depressing fact that not only has this target not been achieved, but there are more children not in school now than a decade ago.

These studies deal with the situations where children get the worst deal from education systems. But they are not primarily concerned with numbers. Save the Children and many others who are concerned about children's education see a more fundamental problem facing education policy makers: the fact that there has been a disastrous drop in the quality of the school experience. In the poorest countries, and also in the poorer communities in countries that in gross income terms are not considered poor, worsening economic conditions and the pressure to get ever larger numbers of children into already overstrained school systems has created a situation where in many places the school experience has become so dysfunctional as to be damaging to children. How can education planners begin to reverse this negative spiral?

The original goals of the Education for All decade focused on quality of education as well as enrolments of children. These studies are being published as world leaders review their commitments to Education for All at the World Conference on Education in Senegal. Governments have an opportunity to place the quality of education at the heart of their plans for education in the new century. We hope that these case studies will play a role in clarifying what quality education means in practice.

The questions

Our aim has been to consider what an international development agency can do to help improve schooling for disadvantaged groups of children. First, what are the factors that structure educational disadvantage? And secondly, are there things an international agency can do to support governments, local organisations and communities to overcome these problems? What kinds of roles have international agencies taken? Which of these are potentially effective?

We consider these questions through an analysis of selected examples of the work of Save the Children (UK), drawn from experience of work on education in over fifty countries. The studies give an insight into problems of schooling in some of the world's poorest countries, among groups of children whose needs are neglected by current school systems - in other words, at the point where education delivery is least effective.

Where a consensus emerges across studies, this can be taken to represent the collective approach of Save the Children across a diverse range of contexts of disadvantage; overall, therefore, the book can be seen as a case study of the diversity of one international agency's activity in education. There is no suggestion that the approaches analysed here are more worthy of study than those of other organisations. They are offered merely as examples of ways of tackling problems that have been found useful in difficult contexts. We hope their publication will stimulate others to share their experience.

The title Towards Responsive Schools reflects the central conclusion: that one of the main things that can be done to improve schooling for disadvantaged children is to encourage school providers to be more responsive - to the particular needs of children in each situation, to the challenges of changing external conditions, and to the community of school users who have much to offer to the educational process. The case studies reflect a range of different challenges, but in all of them Save the Children's efforts have been directed towards encouraging greater responsiveness.

THE PROCESS

The project experimented with an approach that stands in contrast to the 'extractive' research model in which, in its extreme form, a highly trained western academic researches an issue in a poor country, and publishes the results for an audience which excludes the local people who were the source of the information and have the greatest interest in understanding what has been learnt. While conscientious researchers would now commonly make efforts to avoid this extreme approach, we are in practice often structured into it despite our best intentions, by the imbalance of educational and funding opportunities between 'north' and 'south'.

The participants

In this project a determined effort was made to give a voice to local understandings of problems, often already clearly articulated but by people who seldom have direct access to an international audience. We were in an advantageous position to be able to do so, since the body of material being considered was the programme experience of an international NGO, and the obvious central contributors were nationals of the countries concerned who have manage these programmes, Their understandings are not based on theoretical study but on years of struggling with these problems in their work as staff in Save the Children, or in the organisations with whom it works.

The tasks of analysis and writing were supported by a London based editorial team. Since many of the contributors had not previously conducted systematic analysis or written for an audience outside their country, one member of the editorial team was allocated to assist with the writing up of each study, and to act as 'editor', a role which involved balancing the perceptions of many individuals. Since the intention was to reflect the diversity and individuality of contributors' points of view, the resulting studies vary considerably in style, length and emphasis. The 'Editors' Conclusions' at the end of each study highlight points that particularly contributed to our overall understanding of the issues.

The results are being returned to participant contributors through a series of experience-sharing workshops, and the publication in several languages of a handbook for practitioners.

Defining the research framework

An initial overview of experience was conducted by requesting short 'theme papers' from countries where Save the Children has experience in education, on any issue which staff in that country considered critical to the education of children in disadvantaged groups. Fifty papers were generated, which were then analysed over a two-week period by a working group made up of two representatives from each of five continents, one a national staff member and one with experience of work across countries. This provided a clarified framework of Save the Children's principles and practice in education, which was written up by two members of the editorial team and published as a short handbook, A Chance in Life (1998).

From this collective analysis the central hypothesis emerged, that a critical contribution an international agency could make was to support local/national groups or systems to develop more responsive forms of schooling. The aim then was to investigate through case studies the process by which such approaches had been developed.

Local research/analysis

An invitation to conduct a study was offered to all countries that had contributed to the overview. The selection was made on the following criteria:

· Relevance to current education debates: a difficult context, and an issue relevant beyond that country;

· Depth of experience: from a country where Save the Children has been working long enough to provide a useful example to analyse;

· Competence to produce a useful case study: availability of local contributors able to generate sufficient material to form the basis of a publishable study.

· In Ethiopia, India, Lebanon, Liberia, Mali and Peru a review process was set up. Participants included children, parents, community members, teachers, workers in local organisations, education officials, employers, academics and international agency representatives. The process was led by nationals of that country who had a historical view of the programme.

· In Mongolia, Mozambique and Pakistan a more limited process took place: an individual undertook a review based on documentary study and interviews with key participants. The lead person in these cases was not a national of that country, but had contributed over a number of years to that programme's development.

Over the two-year period members of the editorial team analysed what was coming out of the studies. Where issues were raised which required insights beyond the scope of the selected studies, additional short papers were commissioned.

Clarity on central issues was greatly enhanced by discussions at four cross-regional workshops set up as part of the project, where 170 people from 35 countries debated the issues that this book is concerned with. Participants included Save the Children staff and partner organisations, local and international NGOs, government officials and academics.

We have tried to make each study intelligible to people who have never been to that country by including enough background on the context, and have avoided dense academic styles and unnecessary acronyms. *

The editorial team
London, August 1999

* Those we have used are:

NGO (non-governmental organisation)local NGOs - operating within one country, though often funded from international sources international NGOs -working in many countries, with funding usually recruited in wealthier countries and used to support programmes in poorer countries

CRC (the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child)

SCF (Save the Children/UK)

DFID (the UK government's Department for International Development)

UN agencies (e.g. UNICEF)

GNP (Gross National Product)

· Challenges in basic education - South and Central Asia (Nepal, July 1998)

· Challenges in basic education - Africa (Kenya, July 1999)

· Education in countries in rapid economic/political transition (Kyrgyzstan, April 1999)

· The potential of NGOs for influencing education policy and practice (Brazil, July 1999)

· We recommend that readers look first at Section I, which gives an overview of issues, and locates within a wider context the questions raised in particular studies.

· Country case studies have been grouped in four further sections around contexts that produce disadvantage, each with an introduction highlighting the linkages. Each of the sections can be read on its own, and they do not need to be read in sequence.