SECTION I. EDUCATION FOR CHILDREN THE WORLD NEGLECTS

Contexts of disadvantage
What can an international agency do?

We begin by clarifying the scope of these studies: · The children, the types of schooling, the questions we ask about them · The grouping of studies to reflect a range of contexts · The concepts we use to analyse educational disadvantage

Contexts of disadvantage

Each study in this collection traces the evolution of Save the Children's work in education in a particular country, and in response to the needs of a particularly disadvantaged group of children. The aim is to learn what each of these cases can tell us about what constitute useful types of involvement for an international agency in education.

THE CHILDREN, THE SCHOOLS, THE ASPIRATIONS

The children

They live in shanty towns in Peru, remote villages in Mozambique, and the foothills of the Himalayas. Their families are poor and they are expected to work from an early age, stitching footballs in Pakistan or herding animals in the arid Sahel. Some speak languages which are the vehicle of strong oral cultures but which are looked down on by the dominant national group and never used in school. Others have been dismissed by adults as not worth educating - girls - or even ineducable - children with disabilities. While many of the children are lively and resilient, some have experienced at an early age a level of stress that is painful to contemplate - Palestinian children born into crowded urban refugee camps to parents who were themselves born in the camp; Mongolian children who survive the freezing winters undernourished and underclad, paying the price of political change that has swept over their country; Liberian boys who were recruited at gun point to be fighters in a civil war and then dumped by the factions that recruited them, a potential menace to themselves and society.

The schools

Across this huge range of life experiences, of political and geographical contexts, people put their faith in the power of schools to offer these children a better chance in life; but it is precisely these groups of children who are least likely to get the kind of schooling that could help them. Some live in places where there are no schools. For others, the local schools are of such poor quality that it is developmentally healthier for children not to be in them. The school systems are run by inflexible bureaucracies - if children face difficulties in attending because of the constraints of their lives, that is their problem, not one for the school system to sort out. What is taught in school is often incomprehensible (in a language children have never heard) and unrelated to their lives. Teachers are harsh, unmotivated and unmotivating. Children with hard-pressed life conditions drop out, having learnt little. Vulnerable children get the worst of school systems, when they have most need of the best.

The systems

The diversity of life contexts suggests that a diversity of types of education would be needed; and certainly there are major differences in what is provided. But these differences stem more from levels of resourcing and patterns of political decision-making than from any consideration of the kind of education system that would be appropriate in that context. In many countries there is a depressing lack of concern by policy makers and those who administer school systems as to whether the service they deliver is relevant -to any child, let alone to children dealing with the burdens of poverty and disadvantage. The subject matter of these studies treads on what is inevitably controversial ground; this is compounded by the fact that we are considering a role for an international agency in what goes on in national education systems¹. So we need to begin by clarifying certain assumptions about the process being investigated that were common to the groups producing these studies.

What kind of education?

Save the Children's perspective on education is that it is a life-long process, beginning at birth within the family, and that the education children receive out of school may be of more value than that which they get from school. But these studies focus specifically on schooling, responding to the almost universal desire in poor communities for children to be able to go to school, which in turn is based on the assumption that this will help them have a better chance in life. ²

The studies all consider problems of basic education provision for children. We use the term broadly, to mean the first stage of schooling, but this varies according to context:

· Pre-school provision, in a country where children do not start school till 8 [Mongolia]

· The first years of primary school [Mali, Pakistan] or the whole primary school stage [Ethiopia, India, Mozambique, Peru]

· Out-of-school activities across the age range [Lebanon].

· 'Catch up' education for youths affected by war [Liberia]

Why do children go to school? Why do their parents want them to? Across these diverse contexts there is a surprisingly wide area of agreement. A useful education is thought of in most of the contexts studied here to be one which helps children (at a minimum)

· become literate and numerate
· acquire basic skills to equip them for life challenges and improve their livelihood options
· become responsible members of society, trained in what that community considers good values
· extend their understanding of the world around them.

Constraints and strategies

Local research groups were asked to consider two broad questions in relation to one group of particularly disadvantaged children:

· What constraints prevent this group of children from getting to school, or if they are in school, from getting a schooling that is useful to them?

· What strategies has Save the Children developed which it considers potentially effective in improving schooling for this group of children?

By strategies we mean a way of tackling problems. Each study traces the history of one Save the Children education programme, and evaluates the strategies it has used. By 'education programme' we mean an inter-related set of activities in one country, undertaken to stimulate positive change in how education is provided for disadvantaged children. ⁴ There are many possible strategies for tackling a similar problem, and the decision which to use has depended on an analysis of the particularities of that context. For instance in the case of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon the school system is rigid, inappropriate and difficult to influence, and the strategy described here was to develop a range of out-of-school activities which met the needs that school was not meeting. In Mozambique the system was similarly rigid and inappropriate but much less effective in its coverage. Here the strategy was to support the school system itself to become more effective (by repairing schools, funding teacher training, etc) and to use that as an entry point to lever for more flexibility and relevance.

How do we 'evaluate' strategies?

We use 'evaluate' in its general sense of making a judgement about the value of those strategies - how effective have they been in that context, and what is the potential for applying them elsewhere?

By the nature of the subject, as well as the chosen methodology of participant evaluation, the judgements are primarily qualitative. Quantitative indicators were collected wherever appropriate and possible, but the studies do not focus on broad measurements of 'outcome' such as increase in enrolment or decrease in the drop out rate. These have their place but are blunt tools for understanding the process by which change has taken place, which is the primary concern of the studies. They are also of dubious validity in making judgements about the impact of a defined set of activities, given all the extraneous factors that are known to affect enrolment and drop out (inability to pay school fees, the need to earn, environmental pressures, political instability, etc.)

In undertakings as complex as these, each made up of many different strands of activity by many people over many years, impact cannot be precisely measured; but judgements can and have to be made as to whether a particular way of tackling a problem is useful.

Primarily, then, what these studies explore is the rationale behind how work on education developed, as seen by those who have had a hand in developing it. What problems were the activities designed to tackle? Why were certain approaches used and others not? Why were particular partners chosen? What issues arose which had not been foreseen? How were strategies altered to take account of these? What problems have not been tackled, and why?

The research groups were not asked to assess whether it would be possible to repeat these experiences on a broader scale. It is an important question but to answer it meaningfully would require an analysis of many other factors outside the range of this study, including the agendas of major organisations, governments, and powerful interest groups.

To summarise:

The studies are primarily concerned with identifying processes that could move school systems in a direction more appropriate to the needs of disadvantaged children. They offer no simplistic solutions, but a serious engagement with the complexity of each context and the challenges it poses. Collectively they make clear that even given formidable constraints, sensitive support from an international agency can foster processes which will improve schooling for the most disadvantaged.

GROUPING OF CASE STUDIES

The studies are grouped in four sections to reflect the range of conditions that structure children's educational disadvantage:

· Where there is no school [India, Mali]

· Children affected by conflict [Lebanon, Liberia, Mozambique]

· Pressures from a global economy [Pakistan, Mongolia]

· Linking schools and society [Ethiopia, Peru]

This section considers what can be done in places where children cannot go to school because there is no school accessible to them. The examples are from rural Africa and South Asia, the two continents with the poorest economic and education indicators, where probably half the children of primary school age are not in school. Both studies are set in remote rural areas, and each traces the history of a small-scale experiment to work with villagers to create their own schools. They highlight the critical role of project initiators in situations where communities are seriously disempowered, and show contrasting ways in which an international agency can support community initiatives:

· In the India case the initiating group is a local NGO; Save the Children's role has been to provide support over a long enough period to allow the development of responsive styles of school provision, based on a high degree of community involvement.

· In the Mali case there was no local group to initiate community action so Save the Children staff themselves took this role, linking it from the outset to negotiation with government education providers.

· In Zimbabwe state planners have ignored the needs of the children of workers on the large commercial farms. Here Save the Children worked as a broker between government and employers, to change a situation where neither took responsibility for providing schools for the children.

· In Lesotho. Save the Children was invited by the Ministry of Education to help implement a national plan to integrate children with disabilities into mainstream schools.

This section considers situations where international agencies get involved in education provision as a response to humanitarian crises. For children damaged by war or political conflict schooling assumes a special importance, creating a 'normalised' environment and offering purpose to young lives in otherwise bleak situations. The studies illustrate attempts to provide appropriate education for conflict-affected children, contrasting the immediate and long-term contexts:

· The Lebanon case deals with long term effects of unresolved political conflict, in this case on Palestinian children whose only experience of life has been in refugee camps. Here schools are provided with UN assistance, but they follow a rigid local system and do little to tackle critical issues of identity and self esteem. The study describes attempts to meet these needs through complementary education activities outside school, highlighting the importance of child and community participation.

· The Liberia case, set against the background of civil war, shows how direct rapid intervention by an international agency may be the only way to help children damaged by war, in this case child soldiers at the point of demobilisation. With no centrally determined curriculum or school structure to constrain it, the project evolved highly responsive styles of schooling tailored to the boys' needs, and then found that these proved effective also for children in surrounding communities.

· The Mozambique study describes an attempt to support a provincial government in rebuilding education provision after conflict, in a situation of very limited resources. Here the priority initially was on infrastructure, but with a growing recognition of the need to engage also with what happens in schools.

This section highlights situations where children are directly affected by the impact of international economic pressures, and where education could have a role to play in mitigating the problems if styles of schooling could be adapted to the demands of a changing environment. The studies give two examples where Save the Children has used its international experience to contribute to an analysis of problems and to support education providers in adapting to a new situation:

· In Pakistan an international consumer-led ban on child labour (which aimed somewhat simplistically to take children out of work and into school) threatened to leave children vulnerable and without alternatives. Through a survey of children's attitudes Save the Children helped to show that the work was not hazardous, and that low quality schooling rather than work had been the main cause of low school attendance. In partnership with other organisations it pressed for a phased approach to the ban. Save the Children now works with a local NGO to improve school conditions in the area most affected.

· In Mongolia a period of sudden economic decline and social upheaval followed the loss of a protected place within the Soviet economy, and the withdrawal of subsidies which had previously supported a well resourced education system. The state-run pre-school system was threatened at the time when more young children were becoming vulnerable. Save the Children supported the national government to monitor the effects of transition on children and to develop a framework for adapting pre-school provision to the changing context.

The final section considers attempts to link school systems more closely to the societies they are intended to serve, through encouraging them to be more responsive to the views of parents, teachers and children. The cases are from one of the poorest countries in Africa and one in Latin America, where multilateral and bilateral donors have an input into education reform at national level but there are doubts about the benefits these will bring at school level. The studies consider the role of a smaller agency in supporting improvements in schooling from the bottom up, by facilitating interaction between education providers and the people who use the schools:

· The study from Ethiopia illustrates an attempt to encourage government providers at the regional level to develop more responsive styles of school provision, allowing more involvement by school users. It highlights the possibilities but also the limits of governmental decentralisation.

· From Peru, where state education provision has declined as a result of economic and political instability, this study describes an attempt to build on the Latin American tradition of civic action, engaging key educational actors (teachers, school users, academics) in more active participation in national debates on education reform.

[For further discussion of issues in each context, see introductions to Sections II-V.]

ANALYSING EDUCATIONAL DISADVANTAGE

· The concept of 'educational marginalisation'
· The impact of poverty on schooling
· What is wrong with schools?

The concept of 'educational marginalisation'

For the purposes of the research we used as a working tool the rather vague term 'disadvantaged', but we hoped through an analysis of the resulting case studies to reach a clearer understanding of what structures educational disadvantage.

A concept that we have considered is the idea of 'marginalisation', increasingly used to describe the commonality of many states of disadvantage.⁵ The term is useful in that it reflects what many people experience as a reality (both within states and globally) of a number of 'centres' where power is concentrated and decisions are made, while on the edges are groups who are excluded from decision making and cut off from the benefits of what society provides. 'Marginalised' implies, therefore, a contrast with 'mainstream'. The difficulty is that it is easy to slip from a distinction of mainstream/marginal to assuming that this is a majority/minority phenomenon i.e. that the 'marginalised' are a numerical minority. But we would need to include among the educationally marginalised all children who cannot go to school because they have to work to support families; all who live in rural areas where there is not a school in every village; those in poor communities who get to school but because of the very low quality of schooling do not stay long enough to get anything useful from it; children of pastoralists, most children with disabilities; the millions of children in city slums... Add to that girls, in the many societies where girls' education is not considered important, and it is clear that we are not considering a small numerical minority on the edges, for in some countries the children who are 'marginalised' educationally may well constitute a third or more of children of school age.

The term usefully adds to the more neutral 'disadvantaged' the sense of being excluded by from participation in decision making. But in this sense the term could apply to whole populations, and certainly to almost all children in respect of the education they are expected to undergo. But this in itself highlights an important feature of what we are considering here - the lack of involvement of children and their communities in decisions about schooling. With all the many reasons why the children in these studies are disadvantaged educationally, two stand out as common across continents and different political or economic contexts:

· Poverty: Poverty is the most obvious common issue, the most powerful excluder from school. Not all states of educational disadvantage are caused by poverty but all are made worse by it.

· Schools are unresponsive - to children's developmental needs, their life conditions, and changing environments. Few school systems have mechanisms that would enable a more responsive style of schooling to develop, through allowing children, their parents and teachers a role in influencing the kind of schooling children are expected to undergo. We shall consider each of these themes in turn below.

THE IMPACT OF POVERTY ON SCHOOLING

· How are poverty and educational disadvantage linked?
· Is poverty natural?
· Child poverty and schooling in rural areas
· The experience of poverty and the consequences of inequality

How are poverty and educational disadvantage linked?

The studies show four different kinds of link between poverty and educational disadvantage:

· State poverty: Children in the poorest countries are those who face the most obvious educational disadvantage. By 'poorest countries' we mean those with the overall worst economic indicators, where the state is least equipped to provide and resource effective schooling. In these studies Mali, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Pakistan are clear examples, with educational disadvantage being reflected in almost all aspects of school provision - not enough schools, buildings in a poor state, few books or learning materials, and teachers inadequately trained or untrained, underpaid, under-motivated.

· Economic class - inequity in state provision: Both in these 'poorest' countries, and in others such as India and Peru which are not classed among the poorest in terms of GNP but have high levels of poverty, there is markedly uneven distribution of educational chances. For children in the poorest classes economically the state provides fewer schools, and schools of lower quality -poorer buildings, less equipment, and fewer trained or motivated teachers.

· Poverty created by political events or upheavals in society: Many of the studies describe an increase in poverty linked to specific events:

- In Mongolia the sudden changes of the past decade;

- For Palestinians in Lebanon, lost livelihoods with the loss of their land;

- In Liberia, the civil war that left large numbers of children without adult carers;

- In Mozambique, the effect of HIV/AIDS, which both threatens children directly and may leave them without adult care.

· Household poverty and the costs of schooling: All but one of these studies highlights the fact that for the poor, the costs of a child attending school are far higher relative to household income than for the better off. The only exception is Liberia, which deals with young boys who no longer live as part of a household. As a result, within poor communities, the children from the poorest households are the least likely to be at school. The studies raise issues of costs to the family of three kinds: loss of the contribution the child can make to household income is an issue in almost all the studies; contributions in labour and materials to constructing and repairing school buildings; and -perhaps the most critical issue here - contribution to teachers' salary. ⁶

In most contexts there is the added burden (not specifically treated in these studies) of school uniforms, books, and a number of other levies.

Is poverty natural?

Over the past decade the stated aims of major development assistance programmes have come to include phrases like 'alleviating poverty', 'reducing poverty', even 'ending poverty'. This recognition of the importance of the issue is welcome, but it is not often accompanied by serious analysis of what causes poverty, and without this it is difficult to see how progress can be made in alleviating it or in achieving meaningful reforms in social service provision. In education reform as in other sectors, interventions geared towards quick results fail to improve things longer term because of the lack of analysis of linkages with poverty.

The experience from these case studies reinforces what can be learnt from serious study in many fields: that poverty is not a 'natural' state but is continually being constructed, by environmental, economic and political forces. To list some of the examples generated by these studies, each of which is representative of types of poverty causation in many other countries:

· Until the political and economic changes of ten years ago there were no Mongolian children having to fend for themselves on the streets; as in many of the countries of the former Soviet Union.

· If the wealthier countries did not profit from unequal terms of trade, and workers could earn living wages for their labour, there would not be so many children forced into work to help support the family. Piecemeal attempts to redress rights within a basically exploitative situation do not relieve poverty; children banned from the football stitching industry in Pakistan will still have to work to help support their families, but they may be forced into work which is more hazardous.

· The children in the Sahel studies (both in Ethiopia and in Mali) live in communities that have to struggle considerably harder for survival than they did fifty years ago, because of changes in the land and climate, and those changes themselves are affected by patterns of land use, conflict, etc.

· Palestinians would not be facing the kind of poverty they do in refugee camps if the major powers had not colluded with the events that caused them to lose their country; and their poverty could now be reduced if the Lebanese authorities allowed them to work outside the camp.

· If the international arms industry did not profit from the sale of weapons, there would be little to fuel conflicts such as those in Liberia.

Five of the studies give a particular insight into problems of schooling in rural areas of poor countries. Here poverty affects children in extreme forms: they do not have enough to eat, are vulnerable to disease, and in many cases malnutrition in early childhood has affected physical and intellectual development. Even where children are able to go to school, their ability to concentrate is likely to be diminished by these burdens.

Each study moves beyond general statements about poor levels of state resourcing to give an insight into the conditions which, in that particular geographical or political context, compound the difficulties for the authorities (in providing schools) or for the children (in benefiting from them where they exist.) In both the Somali Region of Ethiopia and Douentza District in Mali the land is arid, drought is a constant threat, and survival is a finely balanced matter. Children have to work to contribute to the family economy. The studies highlight the inappropriateness of school systems which do not take this into account. Parents are forced to make hard choices about whether to invest in basic household survival needs or whether to send children to school (and if so, which children). Both the Somalis in Ethiopia and the Fulfulde in Mali are pastoralists, and sections of the community have to move for part of the year to find grazing for animals, thus posing particular challenges in school provision (issues which the studies here acknowledge, but do not directly tackle).⁷ In Zambezia Province in Mozambique a major complicating factor was the destruction caused by a protracted civil war, and the legacy of tension it left. In the 'hills' in north India (mountains by most standards) geography is a determining factor: children would have to make an arduous journey to get to a school in a neighbouring village, yet low population density means the state cannot envisage providing a school in each village. But here too political factors play a part; the villagers in this study are what in India are called a 'tribal' group (elsewhere they might be called an ethnic/cultural minority) and there is a perception that government is less concerned to provide schools for their children.

Though rural areas are generally least well served in terms of schooling, the essential divider is economic class, not geography. Children in shanty towns have equally slim chances of getting a useful schooling, and rural children from better off families are not disadvantaged in the way the poor are. This point is so obvious to anyone working in these contexts that most of the case studies do not state it explicitly; but to a wider audience it perhaps needs underlining because it has become unfashionable in the west to analyse in terms of economic class. The Pakistan study effectively highlights the distinction. It is set in the relatively prosperous district of Sialkot, one of the success areas of rural development with fertile agricultural land and diversified small scale industry. But the children in the study are from the poorest class, providing cheap labour in the industries as a supplement to peasant farming that alone cannot support the family. Despite the relative wealth of the district, schools for poor villagers barely functioned at the start of the programme. The Zimbabwe case (given in a summarised extract) provides an even more glaring example, where there were no schools for the children of poor farm labourers.

In situations where poverty has been the norm for generations, conditions that to outsiders may seem unbearable are borne with pragmatic acceptance. For instance, assumptions in wealthier societies about the damaging effect on children of having to work to contribute to family income are challenged by the expressed opinions of children themselves in both the Pakistan and Mali cases. This makes international interventions in situations of poverty particularly complex to manage honestly. Importing outside standards that would be impossible to achieve in that context would be unhelpful; the other extreme is worse, that of assuming that poor schools are good enough for poor children.

The experience of poverty and the consequences of inequality

A second factor which makes it difficult to make useful judgements across contexts is that while one can compare absolute levels of poverty (state poverty as expressed in GNP, household income, levels of resourcing for education) the experience of poverty is relative. People feel poor compared to what others around them have, and also compared to what they used to have. A city kindergarten in Mongolia or a school for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon does not appear 'poor' to an international visitor in the same way that a school of crumbling mud in Mali does. But this does not mean that the problems in the Mongolia or Lebanon cases are experienced as any less urgent for those concerned; in both of these cases the sharp sense of loss of what one used to have makes the deprivation feel all the greater.

The Mongolia study offers a particularly useful context for considering the relationship of poverty and school opportunity. The school system was until the recent economic decline well resourced, with well trained teachers, and achieving almost 98% coverage by schools and 25% by state run kindergartens (a level seldom met in the west). With the dramatic economic decline following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the state could no longer resource this level of provision. Under pressure from donors it cut spending on the kindergarten system and imposed user fees, just at a time when child poverty and vulnerability was increasing dramatically. User fees meant that the children who most needed the care of a good kindergarten were least able to get it; and in a society where the social problems and rising crime that come with poverty were new, it was particularly clear that society as a whole stood to lose from the exclusion of the poorest children from adequate care.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH SCHOOLS?

· The failure of school systems to achieve their aims
· Systems with no mechanisms for change
· The vital link between school and society

While one cannot overstate the importance of poverty issues in limiting educational opportunity, it is equally important to recognise that there are other factors that seriously limit the usefulness of school-going for the world's most disadvantaged children. What can we learn from these case studies about the nature of the school systems themselves?

We are thinking here particularly of the school experience for children in the poorest communities, but against the background of the 'normal' form of schooling in that society. The 'norm' is important even for children excluded from school (as in the studies in Section II) or those for whom alternatives are set up (as in Section III). It is the normal system into which they aim to be accepted, or against which the adults leading experimental projects react.

The failure of school systems to achieve their aims

In the state schools in the context reflected in these studies, the typical classroom experience has at least one and in several cases all of the following serious limitations:

· The teachers are not responsive to children's needs, and their harshness depresses the children's capacity to learn and develop

· Children are not encouraged to learn in the way they are best able to (actively) or to acquire learning skills they could use outside the classroom

· The schools do not provide effective teaching in literacy and other basic skills

· The experience of school does not prepare children for real-life challenges.

When we compare how the systems in each of the countries in the studies rate on the four criteria listed above, we discover a revealing pattern of how this interacts with problems caused by poverty, and it is not the simple equation one might expect. In the countries where inadequate resourcing has been the pattern for decades, schools do badly on all four counts, but the converse is not always true. The Mongolia system, the one most recently hit by a severe decline in resources, comes out high on effectiveness - but the issue of preparation for actual life challenges is a major concern, here as elsewhere. Effectiveness here is achieved because the system is still running on fuel supplied by a better resourced era, and this includes teachers trained to deliver the prescribed curriculum in the prescribed form. The system itself lacks a mechanism for internally generated change based on sensitivity to changing external realities.

A similar relationship between problems caused by poverty and those intrinsic to the system itself is observable within countries with very inequitable income distribution, like Pakistan or India, and here the Peru study is particularly interesting because it is dealing with quality issues across the national school system. In such countries the state system applies to children across economic classes but schools for the better off are considerably better resourced; children in better off schools do on the whole become literate, learn a prescribed body of facts and pass national exams, which gives them a definite advantage over those in poor schools where effectiveness in these terms is much lower. But for better off children as well there are severe limitations because teaching style precludes a genuine educational process, and there is an equal issue about the relevance of what is taught.

Systems with no mechanism for change

The studies reflect a great diversity of systems but all are trapped by their own particular history, creaking uncomfortably under the pressure of changing times, and fundamentally resistant to change. Almost all the systems were essentially modelled on those of the colonial powers (Britain, France, Portugal, Spain) and still use styles of classroom discipline and teaching methodology that were current a hundred years ago or more in the colonial country but have long since been repudiated there. They remain entrenched in the ex-colonies, and education ministry officials continue to be resistant to the suggestion of changes that appear to offer anything less rigidly defined than their conception of the education systems of the wealthier west. Within the systems themselves there are no inherent mechanisms for change:

· Few teachers in under-resourced systems have opportunities for in-service training. Their initial training may have had almost no methodological content, and rarely of a kind that would help them respond creatively to difficult teaching contexts.

· There are few structures that make officials accountable for what they do, and almost none which would suggest to them that listening to what children and communities want from schools is a relevant part of their role.

· There is little public debate on education. Decisions are typically made at national ministry of education level and passed down through the hierarchy.

· Where pressure for change comes from international donor sources, this commonly has the effect of making the system less responsive rather than more. Dependence on donor funding engenders a passive attitude on the part of officials, who wait to see what donor priorities are and adjust their policies accordingly.

The schools for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon offer a particularly telling example of the need for change, and resistance to it. Fifty years ago the situation of Palestinians in these camps was expected to be temporary, so the temporary expedient was adopted of setting up schools according to the system of the country they had fled to, Lebanon. The Palestinians are stuck there still, with a school system that is, and always was, out of tune with what the children need.

In the Africa and South Asia cases independence from colonial rule has not brought about change in the essential nature of the system, but rather an attempt to extend the coverage of that system, which under colonial rule was never intended to reach more than a small minority. Expansion of numbers has been the primary aim, but without the economic base to sustain levels of effectiveness. And while in the 'Education for All' decade of the 1990s major international agencies and donors have pressed for reforms such as more active learning methods, the major thrust again has been to achieve maximum enrolments within existing school systems. ⁸

The systems themselves always were inappropriate, both to the developmental and learning needs of children and as a mechanism to contribute to society's development. Now, with their archaic methods for 'learning' and 'teaching', their rigid curricula, their rigid and heavily bureaucratised structures, and above all their concept of school as an institution essentially separate from the community, these systems are dysfunctional - unable to fulfill their function of preparing children for life in the present era.

These limitations in the system have of course been observed by educationalists and others over many decades. Why then have the problems not been solved? Consider the process by which such systems attempt to reform themselves: when the need for change becomes glaring, or when outside agencies which are subsidising government budgets apply a degree of pressure which can no longer be avoided, a complex bureaucratic process is set in motion from the centre. Committees are formed, experts summoned. Research is quoted and the experts agree that what is needed is a more relevant curriculum and active learning methods. New procedures are defined, the curriculum altered, examination systems revised, new financial management systems put in; and finally (assuming resources to fuel the process have not run out) those who are supposed to administer the new system are retrained. Some resist the new processes, others go along with them, but through it all the basic system lumbers on, and a decade later it needs reforming again.

The vital link between school and society

The fundamental issue is the relationship between schools and society. In essence the education of children is a process by which adults in the society train them and equip them for adult life. But the systems have become so remote from the adults who actually know the children, who are responsible for them in the broadest sense, who know the conditions of their lives and what they are likely to have to deal with, that this basic connection has been lost. Looking back over the century (which is as long as schools in the form we are discussing them have been a feature in the lives of most of these communities, and for some it is a much shorter period) there are understandable historical reasons why this happened, but by divorcing schooling of the young from their communities, it has become professionalised and bureaucratised beyond the point of usefulness.

For the many millions of children who are not in school the task of educating the next generation is already back in the hands of adults in the community, and in some respects they may be doing a better job than schools. But the increasing burdens of poverty make it more difficult every year for parents to respond adequately to their children's needs for care and development. Their own severe disempowerment limits their ability to provide some critical skills and kinds of knowledge which their children will need even to survive the type of life they were born into, let alone to move beyond it.

CONCLUSION

Children in disadvantaged sections of society do need the things school could offer. But the potential of schooling to contribute usefully to children's development and the development of society is not being realised because the systems themselves are unresponsive - to children's needs, to changing contexts, and to what the community can contribute to the educational process.

Any attempt to improve schooling for disadvantaged children must necessarily engage with issues of poverty, both in challenging its wider causes and looking for ways to alleviate its negative effects on children's educational chances. But this alone will not change their educational marginalisation. Nothing will be gained by trying to get more children into schools unless those schools can be improved to the point of usefulness; and one essential mechanism for doing this is to involve children, parents, teachers, communities, and government officials in processes which will shift schooling in a more responsive direction. The significance of the case studies is that each represents an attempt to do this.

What can an international agency do?

What do these studies contribute to our understanding of how to bring better education opportunities to the most marginalised groups of children? The approaches described here are as diverse as the political contexts and cultures they were responding to. But looking across them we can extract certain shared conclusions, both about the general question of how to achieve change in education, and on what role an international NGO might play.

We begin by clarifying some assumptions about international agency activity in education. Then we consider the role of international support in

· Attempting to realise children's right to education
· Acting as a catalyst for positive change.

VALUES, RIGHTS, AND INTERNATIONAL AGENCY ACTIVITY

In analysing the approaches used by programme initiators and managers in the education programmes studied here, our aim is to become clearer about what is an appropriate role for an international NGO working in education. To talk of an 'appropriate' role is to make a value judgement, and since it is the convention of most western academic research that one should avoid doing this, we need to begin by stating our position.

Values and education

The subject matter of these studies is itself a series of judgements (about what to do and why) and all of them are based on values. It is for instance a value (which one either believes in or doesn't) that it matters as much that girls should learn to read as boys. It is values that tell us it is unacceptable for a particular group of children to receive an education inferior to others simply because they are from a different ethnic group, or a more impoverished class economically. Education is an area loaded with values and these differ widely across societies. It is impossible to consider a value-free intervention by an international agency in education.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child

Save the Children, like many other agencies, takes as its mandate for being involved in issues of children's education the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).¹ The CRC, ten years old in the year these studies are published, represents an attempt by international bodies to define a set of values relating to children that will be valid across countries, and can serve as a basis for negotiation between governments and recognised international bodies because it has been ratified by almost all the governments of the world. While it cannot be assumed that a signature on such a document means either agreement with its details or an intention to implement them, it does provide a basis for discussion, and there is considerable value in having the terms of co-operation made explicit.

What the CRC has to say about children's schooling is summarised in the box at the end of this chapter. It makes several significant points relevant to the theme of this book. Of the two articles specifically on education, Article 28 stresses the right of all children to education, without discrimination on the grounds of gender, ethnic group, disability, religion, etc. Article 29 states that the purpose of a school education is to prepare children for responsible roles in society: that is, to inculcate in them not just skills but values that will enable them to contribute positively. It recognises the primary care role of families and communities but puts the responsibility on state systems to support communities in carrying out that role in cases where children might otherwise be vulnerable. As an extension of the same principle, it recognises that national governments face severe resource constraints in trying to make a reality of children's right to education, and explicitly opens the way for international co-operation to realise this right. The underlying philosophy therefore is one in which the whole human community shares the responsibility to see that children are given the supportive structures they need to survive, develop their potential, and in their turn contribute positively to society. Where those closest to the children can carry that responsibility, they are the most appropriate ones to do it; where they cannot, the wider society has a responsibility to intervene to support processes which will ensure that children's survival and developmental needs are met.

Beyond this, while those who drafted the CRC did not challenge any of the current assumptions about school systems, it is clear that they were aware of some of their limitations. There is a statement that school discipline should not be harsh and that the dealings of adults towards children should be based on respect for the individual child; another article stresses children's right to knowledge in areas that affect their lives. And there are two articles which, if seriously applied to schools, would radically change the way most systems operate. One is the 'best interests' principle: that in any matter affecting children, where there are apparent contradictions of principle, the matter will be decided according to the best interests of the child. The second is the 'children's participation' principle: that in any matter concerning them children are entitled to express their views and to have them seriously listened to (with due consideration for their age.)

'Responsive schools'

The concept of 'responsive schools' as it is used in this book has emerged through practical experience of trying to support changes that will incorporate these values about children's education in the way schools are set up and run. Being responsive is the mechanism by which the institution takes account of the needs it is supposed to be designed to meet:

· Children's needs, as articulated by the communities of which they are part

· Children's own expressed views

· The perceptions of adults both within and outside the communities of the kinds of life challenges children are likely to face.

We would consider that responsive schools are inclusive, responding to the needs of all groups of children. Responsive education officials are accountable, accepting that they are entrusted with this role on behalf of the community. Responsive school systems are appropriately resourced (as a proportion of national revenue), responding to the universal citizen desire for children to have a chance of schooling. They provide a quality education for all (which is not necessarily an expensive one), through equipping the adults who teach children to help them get something useful and developmentally appropriate from the school experience.

Principles of international agency support for education

How should international agencies work to help bring about a situation where responsive schools are the norm? The world of international development assistance lacks an equivalent set of statements of agreed principle. There are current orthodoxies to which most organisations more or less subscribe but also unstated agendas which work against these, so that there is often a startling divergence between expressed values and practice. From the World Bank to the smallest local NGO there is hardly an organisation that would not claim to be in favour of participatory approaches, yet what they mean by it can scarcely be the same thing. To sharpen our understanding of strategies, and to judge which ones have which effects, we need to side-step statements of policy and observe what an organisation actually does. Learning from actual cases is one way to do that.

ATTEMPTING TO REALISE CHILDREN'S RIGHT TO EDUCATION

We summarise here reflections from the studies on some central issues of education reform:

· Can the state provide effective schools for children in the poorest communities?
· How can questions of exclusion be tackled?
· Are more responsive styles of state school provision feasible?
· Can provision be improved where the system itself is the problem?

Can the state provide effective schools for children in the poorest communities?

In almost all the case studies the need for the programme arose because of the state's limited capacity to provide an effective education to the poorest or more disadvantaged children. The studies highlight some of the difficulties of trying to engage with these problems:

· What can modest external inputs hope to achieve?

Underlying each study are large questions about 'capacity building', and what changes it is realistic to aim for given the wider constraints. For instance, is it realistic to think that modest inputs of external support can enable under-resourced systems to adapt to changing external contexts? [Mongolia]; to improve children's livelihood prospects? [Pakistan]; to harness political decentralisation to get greater responsiveness in schooling? [Ethiopia]

· Change on all fronts simultaneously?

Where everything about the quality of schooling is poor, simultaneous actions on all fronts may be needed, and in one given programme that may not be practically possible. Within each programme a degree of focus "was essential: on the language of instruction in Mali, basic training on lesson planning in Ethiopia, a locally generated curriculum in India, warmth and a strong social framework from adults in Liberia, lively learning activities in Lebanon. If we take all the studies together they cover the range of changes that would be needed, but this needs to be seen against a recognition that children need them all and in each case were offered only a selection.

· 'New' approaches, or 'new in that context'?

The programmes have much to offer to debates on relevance, because in contrast to many larger donor-supported education reform packages, they have grappled with issues that concern the whole condition of children's lives. Only a minority of the programmes attempted to pioneer new teaching and learning methods. Even then it would be best to describe these as 'new in that context'. Primarily the programmes have tried to find ways to apply existing knowledge about effecting approaches in the most disadvantaged contexts, where they may seem revolutionary. In an age when people in the wealthy countries, or well-off sections of poor countries, talk of the innovations in education that the electronic revolution will bring, millions of children are still struggling to learn to read through methods known to educationalists to be archaic and inefficient.

· Does local ownership of the process lead to recycling of inexperience?

Where the programmes work with state systems, there has been a strategic choice to support the state system to manage its own reform process. In the least favourable circumstances this meant that state teacher trainers who themselves lacked exposure to a range of methods were recycling their own inexperience. The Mali programme was unusually fortunate in this respect, because they could draw on an alternative curriculum and accompanying methodology that existed within the state system but was hardly implemented. Where this is not possible, there are serious questions about the usefulness of supporting teacher training if the programme does not feel able to negotiate an input of internationally tested techniques for helping children learn. The Lesotho case shows that it is possible to use an external specialist in a way which does not compromise the state system's management of the process.

· What happened to the last donor-supported reforms?

The programmes here echo many attempts to improve effectiveness of schools over past decades, by professionals in state systems, by major donor agencies and by others down to the smallest NGO. There have been countless attempts to introduce active learning methods, more relevant curricula, and better trained teachers. Some of these efforts have succeeded, in some places, for some time; but people who have worked in this area for a number of decades are continually faced with a sense of 'Haven't we been here before?' In a visit to the programme area in Ethiopia, one of the editors was shown a teachers' resource centre that twenty years earlier had been equipped by a German government funded aid programme. There were piles of teaching aid charts produced on fabric so that they would last, deep in dust and carefully guarded by the couple of teaching aid technicians still left; the relics of a once enthusiastic (and probably temporarily successful) attempt to introduce more lively teaching methods. Nearby was a brand new building. World Bank funded, made with expensive imported materials, and empty, though it had been completed for some time. A modern donor attempt to revive the resource centre, but simply as a building, unlinked to any changes in the system to get human beings to use it to benefit children. The 'systems' we are taking on are not only cumbersome and unresponsive school systems, but also inappropriate styles of donor aid.

Are more responsive styles of state school provision feasible?

The studies all suggest that to achieve effective change there needs to be a real engagement by the people closest to schools. ² But are more participatory styles of schooling feasible? Each of the studies can be seen as offering light on a different aspect of this question:

· Can traditionally rigid state systems be persuaded to accept and value more involvement by communities and more child-focused approaches? [Mali, Ethiopia, Mozambique]. And as contributory questions to this:

· Can largely illiterate communities articulate their own concepts of what children should learn? Initiate their own schools? Provide trainable teachers? [India, Mali]

· Can a broad range of school users be equipped to influence state policy and practice in education? [Peru]

· Can a more participatory style of schooling make a serious difference to children damaged by war and conflict? [Lebanon, Liberia]

International agencies that base their work on a child rights mandate have made familiar a long list of groups of children who are often excluded from school: girls, children with disabilities, refugee children, working children, children of pastoralists, etc. It may seem strange to the reader that only a minority of the programmes described here appear to target these commonly listed groups. What, then, are the strategies the studies suggest for tackling exclusion, and trying to ensure that all children get access to an effective schooling?

· A whole community approach

The primary strategy is a whole-community one. This applies even where the initial focus is on one group. For example, though the Pakistan programme focussed initially on working children, the means of improving their school opportunities was to improve schools for all children in that district. In the Liberia programme separate schools were set up to meet the needs of ex-child soldiers. However since one of their central needs was to be reintegrated into society, children in the surrounding community were included in the schools, so they became in effect 'whole community' schools with a cross section of children benefiting from the innovations in methodology. The Lebanon programme focuses specifically on refugee children, but because of the circumstances of Palestinian refugee life this is in fact an entire community.

In all the other studies, there has been a definite strategic choice to tackle issues of school improvement in that community as a whole, and work on issues of exclusion has happened within that framework. This approach, scarcely articulated but clearly shared by people across diverse contexts, derives from the poverty focus discussed earlier - the recognition that poverty is the greatest excluder, and that in poor communities all children are disadvantaged, a fact which tends to get obscured by the long list of separate categories. It also reflects an understanding that problems are never uni-dimensional. We will consider this in relation to the numerically largest commonly excluded group, girls.

· Getting girls into school

A girl child is never just a girl but a child from a particular class, caste, ethnic group, etc. That she suffers educational disadvantage comes from a complex mixture of all these factors; trying to tackle one facet in isolation is as pointless as looking at a broken down car and thinking you can get it moving again by changing the tyres. One of the primary reasons that girls drop out of school early is that they - in common with boys - get so little use out of school. That boys are kept there longer certainly reflects parents' view that boys^' education matters more than that of girls, but nothing will be gained by an 'awareness raising' approach that persuades parents to send girls to useless schools. Yet take a more holistic approach and meaningful change is possible. In the village schools set up in the Mali and India programmes there is a high level of participation by girls (contrary to traditional cultural patterns in both areas) - achieved through engaging with the whole issue of schooling for disempowered villagers. Once villagers had begun to feel their own capacity to set up schools and to think through what should happen in them, they worked without apparent resistance towards trying to achieve parity for girls.

It is useful here to compare the Mozambique programme, where there was a similar concern to increase girls' access through general school improvement, but the programme was not set up to work towards it through an equal level of community engagement. Here the primary strategy was to support the provincial authorities to improve schools, and in the tensions after the civil war government was initially wary of international NGOs making too direct a relationship with communities. So while there have been activities with communities, they have not been of the kind that could achieve the empowering effect described in the Mali and India studies. On the question of girls, the main activity was to include a module on gender in the teacher training course. But while it is helpful for teachers to be made 'gender sensitive', this will not by itself change patterns by which parents decide whether to send girls to school. The issue here is targeting: one can expect change to be achieved only if the activity is directed to the point at which change can be produced.

· Children with disabilities

The issue of how to include children with disabilities in schools is a particularly interesting one in this respect, and one on which Save the Children has a large body of documented experience. There are potential points of change here on both sides -parental attitudes and the style of school provision. The programme in Lesotho [see Section II] aimed to include children with disabilities in mainstream schools, and first this required changes in the way the whole school system worked. A change in attitude was needed, an acceptance that school was for all children and that the onus was on the school to find ways to deal with diversity. Teachers also needed new skills, to cope with children with disabilities in classes which were already extremely overcrowded. But the mechanism here was to move away from teacher-directed rote learning methods to learning activities through which children could achieve at different rates, and to a style of classroom management that encouraged children to help each other. In other words, what was required was a transformation of classrooms into more positive learning environments for all children.

· Language, an issue of access and quality

One significant omission from several of the programmes is a consideration of the issue of the language used in schools. Only rarely do all children in a particular system have the school language as their mother tongue (the only cases this applies to in these studies are Mongolia and Lebanon). In all other countries a large number of children, and in many countries the majority, have their first experience of trying to learn to read and write in a language they have probably never heard spoken and do not understand. ³ They are taught by teachers whose own command of that language may be imperfect and who have no training in methods of teaching a second language. That any children manage to become literate under such circumstances is a testament to the immense resilience of children.

In the programme areas in India, Pakistan, Liberia and Mozambique, the children do not have Hindi, Urdu, English or Portuguese as mother tongues, though these are the languages they have to study in; and in Peru there is a significant minority with mother tongues other than Spanish. There are three possibilities here: either the language of the school is not a problem for children because their own language is sufficiently closely related (which may be the case in the India and Pakistan studies). Or it is a problem for the children but not perceived as such by the adults. Where there is a historical tradition of a school language different from the language of the home, only a minority of adults appear to recognise the degree to which this actively prevents children from getting anything useful from school. Or thirdly, adults may recognise it is a problem yet assume that it is too complicated to solve in countries with many languages, and most of them with no books. The Mali and Ethiopia case studies are particularly significant in that they show how it has been possible to support a move to mother tongue (or near mother tongue) literacy in the first years, even in severely under- resourced contexts, and of the clear impact this has had on what children get out of the school experience.

Can provision be improved where the system itself is the problem?

Many problems in schools are system-induced and not necessarily resource-linked. Here is a potential for tackling problems whose solutions will not depend on constant injections of large donor funding, and this is essentially the territory these studies explore. But here too anyone working for change is up against apparently insoluble dilemmas.

Essentially three approaches are reflected in these studies: to create alternative models, to work with the state system at its weakest points to demonstrate that even there improvements can be achieved, and to support civil society to make the state system more accountable and more appropriate. All three depend for their success on a degree of responsiveness in existing systems, and this acts as a limitation on impact in each case:

· Models from outside the system?

If the state system cannot be persuaded to pay attention to innovations, they will affect the lives of only small numbers. Of course that in itself is worth doing. The issue is here that what is required to achieve a wider effect is probably not something that is within the power of the programme initiators. Similarly with a civil society movement: important reforms in education have been achieved through people's pressure, but usually in systems which are to some degree accountable. We have here a circular problem: having identified the critical importance of moving towards more responsive school systems, attempts to do so are handicapped because the systems are not responsive. Nor are the multilateral donors that have a major hand in determining the direction of state education policy.

· Working from inside the system?

The programmes that work with the state system can each demonstrate modest but definite gains in the direction of a more responsive and appropriate kind of schooling. But this partnership with the state also limits the ability of those who work in the programme to publicly state what they know to be the problems. In several of the studies one needs an ability to read between the lines to see the extent of the problems, and it would have been more useful and challenging if the contributors had given specific examples. But the reason for this vagueness is clear - the state is the main programme partner, and future progress would be compromised by going into print with criticisms.

This sense of constraint is typical of published reports from donors and international agencies, and one of the reasons why despite the volume of paper produced on these themes, public debate hardly seems to move forward: it seems impossible for the people who work most closely with these issues to publicly state what they know to be the case. And whereas for international agencies it is the need for discretion which dominates, for nationals the pressures are often more personal. To openly criticise may lose people their jobs and even risk their security.

· The need for a civil society movement

To challenge abuses and corruption within state system there would need to be a broad movement within that society. An international agency is an unlikely and inappropriate vehicle to initiate that, but it can support whatever groups in society are working for more accountable education systems.

The difficulties however should not be underestimated. We give here one example, not directly from one of the studies but related to it. In the Pakistan programme Save the Children supports the work of a local NGO to improve the standards in rural primary schools, extremely low before the start of this project, as they are for most of the poor in Pakistan. One major problem that will probably not be solvable within the scope of programme activities is that the teachers do not live in the villages where they are allocated to teach, and very often do not turn up. This is a widespread and publicly admitted problem in rural schools in Pakistan; what is not often admitted publicly is that a major cause is corruption in teacher appointments. Appointments are frequently in the gift of politically powerful patrons; the relatives or political supporters appointed to rural schools are often not qualified teachers, and it is understood that they are not expected to take their duties seriously and that they will be protected in the unlikely event of questions being raised about their non-attendance. In a workshop held by Save the Children to bring together Pakistani NGOs, government officials and academics, there was almost unanimous agreement that corruption in appointments and consequent absenteeism by teachers constituted the single biggest obstacle to basic education provision for the poor in Pakistan. Yet in a country with a high level of political violence it takes courage for anyone to openly challenge cases where they see this happening.

ACTING AS A CATALYST FOR POSITIVE CHANGE

Despite these huge constraints, each of the studies offer insights into the process whereby sensitive international support can be a catalyst for positive change in the kind of schooling provided for disadvantaged children.

We summarise these as a series of principles about what to prioritise and how:

· Schools as children experience them
· The vital link between schools and society
· Change from within, and the role of outside support
· Implications for donors

Any attempt to improve education for children should be based on an understanding of their life condition viewed broadly, retaining a strong concept of education as a preparation for life. Adults working in this area have to consciously attempt to get a sense of what the school experience feels like to children (who are put through it by adults)

· Maintain a holistic understanding of children's experience

An organisation is best placed to work on education in areas where it has a broad understanding of the life conditions of children, which can be acquired through work on other sectors [Mali, Ethiopia]. It is not impossible to work appropriately coming in 'cold', but requires a concerted effort to gain the relevant breadth of experience fast [Mongolia]. Taking into account the whole condition of children's lives will almost certainly involve the NGO in sensitive issues, which will require not only tact but also a clear commitment to children's rights. In seriously disempowered communities, it is impossible to work appropriately on education without taking a position on the political conditions that determine children's lives [Lebanon, India]. Where certain groups of children are excluded, it may be necessary to challenge the attitudes of adults who manage the systems which exclude [Zimbabwe, Lesotho]. In conflict areas and humanitarian emergencies there is a particular role for an international NGO. ⁴ Because it is non-partisan it may be able to mediate to get things done for children where local groups would not be listened to, and its international staff can if the occasion requires afford to be more outspoken than local people could.

· Analyse problems from the children's point of view

This general understanding of children's life conditions should be supplemented by specific research to define how children see questions of schooling in relation to other aspects of life [Pakistan], to understand the problems of schooling they experience [Peru], and to observe what aspects of conventional school methodologies are an obstacle to them [Liberia]. This switch of perspective from what adults intend to what children experience needs to be encouraged among all adults who can affect the style of schooling children are expected to undergo. So, for instance, teacher training, becomes not simply a matter of learning 'techniques' but of understanding their purpose and effect on children. [The Ethiopia case shows that this can be achieved even with modest resources and without the involvement of highly trained experts. The children said that after a short training course their teacher now checked at the beginning of each lesson that children had understood what had been taught yesterday, and if not, went back over it, which he had never done previously. In other words the teacher had switched perspective to seeing that the purpose was for children to learn something rather than for him to proceed through the text book.]

· Tackle problems locally, where children experience them

To improve educational opportunities for children requires an engagement where children live and experience schooling [India], supporting communities to take a role in their children's schooling [Mali], and working with education authorities at the point closest to schools to encourage them to respond to community needs [Ethiopia]. It is at this level that significant improvements can be made at relatively low cost.

· Involve children actively in matters that will affect them

There are almost no societies where the idea of children being consulted or participating in decision-making is not controversial. The judgement as to how to engage with this issue has been made differently in each case, depending in part on the character and previous experience of programme initiators. Only in one case was there from the start an openly stated aim of increasing children's participation, and even here it began as an academic vision of child-centred approaches rather than practical measures to work with children [Peru]. In other cases children have been asked their views about schooling, but when it comes to improving schooling they are seen more as recipients of adult efforts on their behalf rather than potential contributors to the process [Pakistan], In many cases the programme initiators who came from a community development background had not considered the possibility of children's participation, but the logic of their own experience made them willing to experiment [Mali. India]. In situations where even the idea of village adults having a role in decisions about schooling was a new one, programme staff have broached the issue tangentially, demonstrating that children have insights to offer and know more than adults give them credit for [Mozambique].

The vital link between schools and society

Education reforms of a bureaucratic/technical kind are unlikely in themselves to make a long-term difference to what disadvantaged children experience in school, unless accompanied by changes in perceptions about the functions of schools and their relation to society.

· Lever for more responsive national systems

It is important to look for ways of influencing national systems to be more responsive. This is needed both to secure changes achieved locally, and hopefully to encourage a spread effect of some of the more successful innovations. Such attempts are most likely to produce an effect at a time of historical change which makes officials themselves aware that they need to find new ways of coping with problems. [Mongolia is an example for a national state system having to reorient itself, Ethiopia for a newly decentralised regional authority]. The studies give examples of attempts to

· support the state system to re-think the function and forms of schooling [Mongolia]

· support the state system to implement progressive policies [Lesotho]

· use experience at district level to influence developments nationally [Mali]

· support children/parents/teachers/other professionals to contribute to debates on school reform [Peru].

The adults most closely connected to the children should necessarily be central to any process that decides what children need to prepare them for the future. They are better placed than remote officials to suggest how practical problems in school provision can be overcome, and regardless of their own educational level can contribute to devising more relevant curricula [Mali, Ethiopia, and India]. But special efforts are needed to encourage them back into this role because generations of over-professionalisation of schooling have persuaded many parents that they are not educated enough to contribute. [Almost all the cases include an element of trying to get greater involvement by parents and the immediate community; those that have succeeded are also those where there has been most progress on making school relevant to children's life experience.]

· Promote 'civil society' groups that can renew the school-society link

To develop more appropriate and responsive systems will require a renewal of the connection between schools and society. This requires an engagement with a broad range of local groups and structures who could be initiators of such a renewal. A variety of other organisations can contribute to this process and the international NGOs role is to facilitate such processes, and promote broad based alliances. Two examples here represent different styles of long-term local/international NGO relationships: one characterised by a creative dialogue [Peru] to devise ways of encouraging responsiveness; and one in which the evolution of the programme has been entirely the work of a local NGO [India], but with Save the Children providing critical financial support and trust over a long enough period to create the space to experiment, and later offering opportunities to share the experience with a wider audience. Some programmes have many partners [Lebanon] as a vehicle for wider dispersal of ideas, or have worked through a broad network partnership of local NGOs, government institutions, employers, and international agencies [Pakistan]. Others that have communities or the state education system as their main 'partner' also work through local NGOs for specific aspects of the work [Mali]. In situations where there are no local NGOs working on a particular issue, Save the Children has supported people to form one, being a 'coaching' partner in the early stages [Zimbabwe].

· Recognise that change processes in education do not need to be led by educationalists

Many of the individuals who initiated new approaches in these programmes had little previous experience of work in education. They were generalist development workers, responding to expressed needs in the community, with a special concern for the needs of children; if they had specialist experience it was in health, water, nutrition, credit, emergencies. Where they felt the need of specialist advice on education specific issues, they brought in someone else short-term to help them work out an approach, and then took that forward independently. In some cases the lack of awareness of - for instance - effective learning methods has caused those managing education programmes to miss opportunities; but their success in other areas demonstrates that many of the strategies needed to improve educational provision are common sense. Much can be achieved by drawing on wisdom and experience in the community itself, and involving a wide range of relevant people in working out new approaches

· Demonstrate that a child- and community-focus leads to effective forms of education

Even where there is little current possibility of influencing the current system it is important to demonstrate that more holistic and child-sensitive approaches to education are possible [India], have a developmentally positive effect on children and their communities [Lebanon] and can contribute to the resilience even of children with damaged lives [Liberia]. In the cases here, the programmes that went furthest in experimenting with methods or approaches to curricula that were new in that context were able to do so precisely because they were not trying to work within the state system; they may nevertheless eventually have an impact on it.

· Promote genuine educational processes, to achieve long term effects

All of these studies suggest that the question of how to sustain innovations in education is not primarily a matter of financing. Changes in attitudes can affect styles of school provision in ways that could be sustained by systems after the end of the programme activity with minimal outside input [Lesotho]; and the effects of even short genuinely educational experiences can be life-changing for individuals [Liberia] and have a diffuse effect through a whole community [Lebanon]. Essentially we are not looking for a set of one-off changes that will stay in place but a culture of responsiveness, whereby all those involved in the educational process continue to be involved. In the Mali case the curriculum has been adapted to meet the needs of children in the project villages; but as life pressures change it will need adapting again. What we hope will last is not that particular curriculum, but the experience gained by all parties that parents, teachers (whether qualified or not) and children can contribute things from their life experience which professionals cannot, and that a process which involves them is one which delivers a more appropriate schooling for children.

Change from within, and the role of outside support

The case studies suggest strongly that there are no 'global solutions' to these problems. Strategies have grown out of an engagement with the opportunities or limitations of particular contexts. New approaches that are pushed from the outside and do not accord with how the communities concerned perceive things are unlikely to last, and a new approach to schooling will only take off if accompanied by a social movement that comes from within that society. International NGOs cannot create such a movement but their activities can provide critical supports to its development, particularly in contexts where local people are overwhelmed by practical problems. To work in this way requires a sensitive awareness of the dynamics of local/outsider initiatives.

· Support processes that make sense within that culture and context

It is significant that almost all the programmes in these studies are managed by nationals of that country, and that the most innovative approaches have emerged where the people who are acting as catalysts for change have developed the closest relationship with the community and drawn on indigenous cultural sources [India.]

· Use 'outsiders' where there is a specific need, but with a high priority on sensitivity

The limitations on the role that can be played by people seen as 'outsiders' needs to be recognised, but there are some contexts where outside experience is an essential feature of what the programme provides. The critical factor then is how sensitively this relationship is handled [Mongolia]. There are also occasions when the outsider/local distinction is blurred. In one African country [Lesotho] an African woman from a neighbouring country, though definitely seen as an outsider, was culturally more attuned than someone from Europe or America could have hoped to be; but conversely, in a programme that mediates between white farm owners and African labourers [Zimbabwe] the programme was led by a white Zimbabwean who could communicate well with both parties, having herself grown up in rural Zimbabwe, speaking Shona with mother-tongue competence.

· Aim for a balance between local decision making and organisational values

The many different ways of tackling problems in these studies reflects Save the Children's basically decentralised structure. Staff in each country decide whether, where and how to get involved in education, and guide the development of the programme. There is some input by staff based in the head office, both in offering a menu of possible approaches tested elsewhere, and through visits to prompt critical reflection [Mali] but only in one programme [Pakistan] was the international view the main influence on strategy choices. Some of the studies reflect shifts in response to policies being articulated on the basis of experience across many countries, for instance a recognition that simply by rebuilding schools one cannot be sure that children benefit from them [Mozambique]. While the organisation's values of what is good for children define the programme's intentions, they are interpreted within each culture [Peru] and with a pragmatic acceptance of what it is possible to achieve in each context. This sensitivity to local contexts is critical and contrasts with some styles of international agency activity which are seen by people locally as insensitively pushing their own agenda.

· Encourage interaction between local and international experience

There are situations (particularly in remote rural areas) where management by people locally employed bring the benefits of local understanding but the limitations of lack of exposure. Here the contribution of supportive outsiders can, at its best, have a strong facilitating effect. One such programme [Ethiopia] with a now well-established and effective style of problem-solving, benefitted from inputs early on by two outsiders, one national and one international, who saw the need to train local staff in participatory approaches. Active learning and child-sensitive teaching methods is another area of skill likely to be introduced by someone with other-country experience, but if appropriately interpreted in the local context they can take root quickly because they so obviously meet a need in the children which traditional methods do not [Liberia]. And in politically tense situations, an outsider who can identify with what local people are going through but does not personally have to carry the burdens of the situation to the same extent, may have energy spare to be supportive and to mediate tensions. [In Lebanon the programme has been managed by Palestinians but has benefitted from the dedicated support over many years of two international staff members.]

· Give a high priority to the personal qualities needed by a facilitator

The above examples indicate that while the local/outsider distinction is important, what matters most are personal qualities. Effective catalysts for change are usually individuals who learn from the people they work with, are sensitive to their way of seeing things and respectful even where it differs from their own, carry lightly the fact that they have a higher level of education or a higher social status, are easy with people of many kinds, and have a genuine commitment to improving opportunities for disadvantaged children. This may seem an unrealistic set of requirements but such people exist and the importance of finding them for this kind of work can hardly be overemphasised for the philosophy and style of work of any organisation depends ultimately on the individuals in it. [This applies across all the studies but the point is made strongly in the Mongolia case.]⁵

Implications for donors:

The implications of these studies pose a challenge to the currently fashionable 'log-frame' approach of many donors, which requires proposals for funding to define objectives to a high level of detail before the start of a process, and who are willing to fund only strictly time-limited initiatives. What emerges here is that among the key characteristics of appropriate donor policies are that they should provide freedom to experiment, and a long-term commitment

· Recognise that to facilitate social change requires an open-ended approach

Contributors to the studies with longer histories look back over different approaches used at different times. This attention to history reflects an organisational understanding that change is an organically developing process where experience continually throws up new aspects of a problem, and objectives will therefore need to be continually redefined. The approaches described here could not have evolved without the salaried time of a few key individuals to explore options and make the basic relationships, or the ability to fund research and other small initiatives to test approaches in that particular context. This was made possible by the fact that, though four of the programmes are now donor funded, in their initial stages all were financed from Save the Children's independent funding, allocated as a budget to each country programme to fund new programme initiatives. There is a vital role for donors willing to take the risk to explore and fund experimental initiatives on the basis of trust for the general style of work within an organisation.

· Commit funding to long term change processes

The programmes included here have been supported financially and organisationally for periods ranging from two years [Mali] to eighteen [Lebanon], and in all except one [Liberia, a short-term measure in a humanitarian emergency] Save the Children has taken on a commitment to continue working in education in that area long enough to see complex processes through. This has involved an often disheartening task of trying to find donors willing to support that type of commitment. The logic of supporting longer-term processes is frequently understood by key individuals within donor agencies, but official funding criteria militate against this.

Campaigns for increased funding from richer countries to poorer (which Save the Children in principle supports) beg the question of the many negative effects of such indefinite subsidies ⁶ , and these issues are beyond the scope of these studies. But three studies offer particular challenges to donor and international agency orthodoxies on the issue of financial sustainability:

· Seriously marginalised communities: who pays, and for how long?

In the India case, the project initiators are definite that the communities are so poor that it is unrealistic to expect them to support schools financially, and also that there is no possibility of the state taking over responsibility. They contend that without continued external funding there will be no schools for these children - and by extension for many millions of others among the very poor. ⁷ By contrast, in Mali the programme has been designed in the hope that the state system will eventually take responsibility for schools initiated by poor communities; but though there are signs of progress in that direction, this in itself raises problems. Teachers in state schools interviewed during the research, though polite and officially supportive of the Save the Children programme, were clearly alarmed at the idea that its efforts to persuade the state to take responsibility for the newly created village schools might succeed, in which case they foresaw a trend in which many village communities would set up their own schools, the state would be under international agency pressure to take responsibility, and resources would be spread even more thinly.

· What happens where there is no state to provide?

The Liberia programme relates to humanitarian emergencies. Here sustainability was not considered, for the state was not operational as a provider of services, and in any case the conventional system could not in any way have met the needs of these particularly war-damaged children. So those managing the programme were clear that here sustainability was not an issue; considerations of whether it might be possible to carry forward some of the useful approaches into the state school system only arose as the emergency phase of the programme was winding down. The children in this case are typical of millions world wide. If the main strategy of the international donor community continues to be to work exclusively through state systems, what happens to all the many children whom no state takes responsibility for, or for whom there is no state capable of providing?

CONCLUSION

Each of the studies is an example of 'micro' level activity. They have operated on budgets so small compared to those of multi-lateral donor projects that it would not be unrealistic to wonder what impact they can hope to have. The changes have been brought about by a few dedicated individuals, working in limited geographical areas. Yet the strategies developed in this way have potential for supporting change processes far beyond the immediate area of activity.

Scale and impact are difficult to compare meaningfully. The programme in Mongolia had national effect (in a country of 2.5 million people); the one in India works in a handful of villages (in the world's second most populous country.) In the first case the effect is diffused over many institutions in the society; in the latter the effect is concentrated, and has brought about profound social change in those areas where it works. Scale is not the essential issue here. The value in these experiments lies not in the actual number of children affected but in what the studies suggest about appropriate ways to go about the task. Collectively they present a picture of real progress on issues where 'macro level' activity has often failed.

Acknowledging all the unanswered questions, we can nevertheless state as an overall conclusion that positive change in education can be achieved even for the most disadvantaged children, and in the poorest parts of the poorest countries, given a modest extra input of resources, both human and financial. This conclusion has profound implications for the potential of schools to counteract the damaging effects of a divided world, and to contribute to positive development.

We highlight three features that appear to be most instrumental in achieving positive change:

· The vital link between schools and society

The primary role of international agencies should be to support styles of school provision that renew the vital link between schools and society. This will involve supporting school users to be more pro-active, and supporting governments and other providers to be more responsive to the contributions of communities and children. It will require decentralised school systems flexible enough to renew the link between schools and society, and respond to local conditions, to changing times, and to a gradually increasing sensitivity to what children experience.

· Schools in the best interests of the child

Although none of the studies refer to the statement in the Convention on the Rights of the Child that in matters that affect them decisions should be guided by 'the best interests of the child', this in fact forms the common philosophy that runs across them. We can summarise it in the statement that for schools to be good for society they first have to be good for children; or, that education systems will not produce a developmental effect in society unless they have a developmental effect for the children who have to go through them.

To fulfil children's right to education, all adults who are in position to influence styles of school provision need to reflect on what children experience in school and how this relates to their real life challenges. Current power relationships (in both school systems and society) do not intrinsically foster such an approach, but in all societies there are groups and social processes which can be supported which could take a lead in developing more relevant and child-sensitive styles of schooling.

· Change from within, and the creative value of diversity

There are certain fundamental principles of how international support should be used. Most are fashionable at the level of rhetoric, but less common in practice. International support can be damaging if applied without sensitivity to these principles, and positive if they are understood and acted on. We can now summarise what we mean by 'appropriate' styles of work for those who aim to be catalysts for more responsive schools. They will need to be clear about the desired direction of change and target activities towards it. They will need to engage with the particularity of each context and support change processes that grow from within, led by people from that society who have been part of its political history and whose fate is tied up with its future. The role for international NGOs arises from their potential to support diversity and to support local experience so it can inform wider policy debates.

The studies are a statement of the need to recognise the creative value of diversity in a world where global 'solutions' are being pressed in all areas of life. There is nothing odd about this perspective coming from an international organisation, for there is no necessary contradiction between being open to learning from experience from elsewhere while retaining a home-grown understanding. Gandhi summarised this neatly:

I want the cultures of all peoples to blow through my house as freely as possible, but I will not be blown off my feet by any of them

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child What does it say about education? The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) provides a legal framework that makes signatory governments accountable to their citizens and to the international community, to show that they are attempting to meet its provisions to the extent possible within available resources. The two articles specifically on education are: Article 28, Education for all: All children have a right to education. It is the state's responsibility to provide at least primary education free to all, drawing on international assistance where necessary to ensure this right. Styles of school discipline should reflect the child's human dignity. Article 29, The purpose of education is to develop children's personality and talents, to prepare them for active adult life, to foster respect for basic human rights, and a respect for the child's own culture and those of others. Four general articles have a direct bearing on what should happen in schools: Article 2, Non-discrimination: All rights apply to all children without discrimination on grounds of gender, disability, ethnicity, religion and citizenship. Article 3, The Best Interest of the Child: In all actions concerning children the best interest of the child should be a primary consideration. Article 6, Survival and Development: The state has an obligation to protect a child's right to life, and to ensure that children are able to develop fully. Article 12, Participation: Children have a right to express opinions in any matter which concerns them, and their views given due consideration in accordance with their age and maturity. Taken together these articles have implications for content, style and methodology. Schools cannot fulfil these rights without drawing on active learning approaches, fostering creative thinking, developing the skills of problem solving, inculcating social awareness, providing for an interaction between school and life outside it, and expecting respectful, encouraging relationships between adults and children.

NOTES

Contexts of disadvantage

¹ For a discussion of the rationale of international agency involvement in education, see chapter 2.

² See Kimberly Ogadhoh and Marion Molteno, A Chance in Life, Save the Children, 1997.

³ As for instance in the publications that have emerged from the Jomtien 'Education for All' decade; from UNICEF; UNESCO; DFID; Oxfam; etc.

⁴ The words 'programme' and 'project' are potentially confusing because used differently by different organisations. In Save the Children, as in several other UK-based NGOs, a 'project' is a smaller scale undertaking, usually one defined activity, whereas a 'programme' means a range of interconnected activities in one country intended to have a more far reaching effect; while in the World Bank a 'project' refers to a set of activities far larger in scale than an NGO 'programme'. Some international NGOs use 'programme' in an organisation-wide sense rather than about activities in one country (i.e. the overall approach of that organisation in that sector.)

⁵ See Marion Molteno, Education at the margins, keynote paper for the conference of that title in Cambridge, April 1998.

⁶ See Felicity Hill, Cost Sharing in basic education, paper prepared for this project.

⁷ See Rachel Lambert, Education for the children of pastoralists, paper prepared for this project.

⁸ cf Perran Penrose: The Education for All thrust of the 1990s was really about extending what might be described as the national/bureaucratic models of basic education, and seeking ways in which customers for this bureaucracy can be enticed to subscribe to its services. In spite of the fiscal impossibility of gaining and retaining children in the formal systems which have evolved, based on bureaucratic curriculum structures, restrictive labour practices and cumbersome and meaningless assessment systems, most attention is paid to making an unworkable model work.' In a memo to Oxfam commenting on their Global Action Plan for Basic Education, July 1999.

What can an international agency do?

¹ A movement for an internationally recognised Children's Charter was in fact started by Save the Children's founder, Eglantyne Jebb, in the aftermath of the 1st World War. Save the Children (UK) is now one of 27 national-based organisations in the Save the Children Alliance, whose common base is t he CRC. The CRC has been ratified by all but 2 governments, of which one is the USA.

² One of the far-reaching implications of this is that smaller inputs of donor aid, well targeted to support local processes, are more likely to achieve beneficial effects than larger ones without any attention to involvement by local people. The Mali study gives an example of this dilemma in the situation faced by SCF(US) when a successful community schools programme had been built up in 700 villages. The essential element of the experience was the involvement of villagers, which it would be impossible to get going within the new timescale.

³ See Joachim Theis, Education of ethnic minority children in Vietnam, paper prepared for this project.

⁴ See also Shon Campbell, Supporting basic education in conflict (examples from Afghanistan); paper prepared for this project. Save the Children staff in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka have also worked with others to produce a useful Minimum Package for Basic Education in conflict areas.

⁵ Across all Save the Children's education programmes, the generalisation holds that the more effective programmes are led by such a person/people. Where it has not been possible to recruit individuals of this kind, this results in a set of activities that do not achieve much however well thought out they appear in principle.

⁶ A key dilemma here is that donor aid in one area may simply release state from responsibility and enable them to shift resources elsewhere. Jacques B Gelina argues that an alternative to donor-dependence is possible, in Freedom from debt: the reappropriation of development through financial self-reliance, Zed Books, 1998.

⁷ For a stimulating discussion on issues of sustainability, and the related development agency dilemmas about 'Scaling up and replicability vs. Influencing', see Pawan Gupta, A view from the South, paper prepared for this project.