Sector Wide Approach: Summary of International Experience June 1999

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Despite the growth in the planning and implementation of sector wide approaches (SWA) to education, debate currently tends to be at the level of general discussion rather than being focused on specific operational issues and the resolution of Government-funding agency tensions.  To move the debate forward, DFID Education Division commissioned this study in September 1998.  Its purpose was to address issues relating to the nature of SWA, their relevance to poverty reduction targets and their general modus operandi.  Its intended audience are those involved with educational development, including providers and recipients of technical and financial support

Most current education SWA are at the planning or early start-up stage.  Accordingly, it is too early for this study either to advocate SWA as a panacea or to be a handbook.  Its aim is to examine whether a SWA (particularly the SWA process) is more likely to contribute to effective education development partnerships.

Individual country judgements are critical, often involving complex political, strategic and tactical assessments.  The study investigates whether a SWA better informs these judgements and contributes to more effective education design/appraisal processes.

The study process has been as comprehensive as time and resources allow, including reference to SWA-related literature, analysis of the views of key informants and some field visits.  The findings also draw on the authors’ direct involvement in a number of SWA in Africa, Asia, Caribbean and Pacific.  Perspectives on other sectors (e.g. health, agriculture) and cross-cutting disciplines (e.g. institutional, economic, social) were gained from directions provided by a DFID inter-disciplinary steering committee and from many other informants.

There are two caveats: education programme designs often necessitate subtle policy and institutional judgements not easily captured through case study analysis and interviews; country situations and education support programme processes are increasingly fluid and dynamic.  In some instances, therefore, the following analysis can represent only a snapshot.

2 The Impetus for Education Sector Wide Approaches

The main driving force behind SWA is Government and funding agency dissatisfaction with the impact of education sector outcomes on poverty reduction.  The study indicates that:

•  the correlation between GDP per capita and education indicators is not very strong;
•  poverty reduction and better education standards have less to do with education spending volumes and more to do with spending effectiveness;
•  effective spending necessitates real commitment to reform, willingness to make hard choices affecting strong vested interests and a capacity to make open and transparent managerial decisions and to improve institutional quality;
• education aid, like other sector support, is more likely to be effective in a strong policy and macro-economic environment, incorporating the views and interests of civil society and the private sector;
•  countries with prolonged political or bureaucratic histories that appear suspicious of open debate (e.g. Ethiopia, Tanzania, Indo China) are amongst those with the poorest education indicators;
•  ironically, countries emerging from conflict (e.g. Rwanda, Uganda Cambodia,) may be in a stronger position for speedy reform and improvement.
  

The broad message is that effective education aid cannot be achieved overnight nor in sectoral isolation.  In education, as in other sectors, effective reform needs champions with long-term vision.  It is necessary to nurture these reformers, who may come from outside the sector, through exposing them to successful innovations elsewhere.  Therefore, the use of political and professional networks is critical.  Commitment to macro-economic stability and effective governance manifested through realistic sectoral expenditure frameworks and open dissemination of education information are equally important.

Issues to explore

1. The formulation of 15 to 20-year education reform perspectives, including linkages with long-term expenditure projections and public service/local Government reforms;
2. Nurturing new capacity building initiatives and programmes;
3.  Promotion of the capacity building of international and regional political/professional networks (e.g. regional development banks, prestigious UN agencies and regional education ministers’ conferences) as part of championing reforms.

3 Sector Wide Approaches: Conceptual Issues

An education SWA is essentially a process with three main phases:

1.  An initial loose Government-funding agency agreement to work together to make education aid more effective (sometimes encapsulated in a Statement of Intent);
2. A subsequent framework for co-operation, which subsumes individual agendas within a common agenda for education reform;
3.   The structuring of a fairly tight operational programme, led and managed by Governments, often expressed in terms of a Memorandum of Understanding, a common Work Plan and, ideally, a Code of Practice, formally agreed by all parties.

Common features of an education SWA are:

• a sustainable partnership, long-term vision and agreed targets for education reform, incorporating civil society, Government and funding agencies;
•  a well-defined sector or sub-sector, incorporating macro and sectoral, institutional and financial policies and structures;
•  a forward looking work programme for medium and long-term sector strategy formulation, preparation of medium to long-term expenditure frameworks, common Government-funding agency management arrangements and capacity building programmes;
•   strategic negotiation and annual sector performance review mechanisms, jointly agreed between Government and funding agencies.

Box (i) encapsulates these and other features of a SWA.

Source: Minister of Education and Sports, Address to Funding Agencies,
Uganda, August, 1998  

4 Funding Agencies: Education Policies, Strategies and Approaches  

Policies and strategies of many funding agencies in the past 15 years have shifted towards many of the aforementioned SWA features and characteristics.  Effective partnerships are central to development support, incorporating broad-based stakeholders.  Pro-poor education strategies are reflected in the growing funding agency priority for basic education support, including countries emerging from civil strife.  Policy and strategy development aimed at school improvement is a central policy platform, linked to on-going monitoring and evaluation of current programmes and innovations.  

Notwithstanding this broad consistency, there are some areas where current design/ appraisal processes may be improved:  

•   the longer-term context for short run support programmes could be made clearer in some cases, especially where technical and financial sustainability are concerned;
•   the assessment of the impact of education programmes on the poor could be better defined; 
•   the assessment of institutional quality and capacity could be more explicit, especially in relation to macro-economic prospects and links with public sector management reforms;
• the process of feedback of monitoring/evaluation studies into future strategy could be clearer in some instances;  
• above all, the long-term nature of the Government-funding agency partnership could be made more explicit.  

Assessments of the planning/design of education and other sector SWA reveal some key concerns.  In many cases there appears to be:  

• a lack of a long-term strategic vision; 
•   a lack of linkage with public expenditure review (PER) exercises; 
•   a lack of effective poverty assessments for ensuring pro-poor sectoral strategies; 
•   an absence of an integrated institutional development and capacity building strategy, incorporating broader public sector management reforms and incentive structures; 
•   limited attention to the preparation of phased and sequenced sector performance-monitoring frameworks; 
•   limited involvement of community groups in sector policy and planning; 
•   insufficient analysis of the impact of other sectors on student performance and attendance (e.g. health - diarrhoea, malaria, malnutrition; transport - poor rural roads).  

The nineties have seen a shift in many funding agency education support packages away from comparatively small, often stand-alone education projects towards larger, broad-based system support programmes.  In addition, the balance of education aid has shifted towards basic education, with declining support for secondary, higher and technical education.  In broad terms, design and appraisal processes have paid growing attention to economic/finance, social and institutional appraisal issues.  

Issues to explore  

1.  Incorporation into funding-agency strategy and policy the main features of an education SWA; this should be reflected in country readiness and programme screening and appraisal criteria; 
2.   The careful integration of cross-cutting issues into forward country strategy and work programmes; 
3.  The value of working towards the evolving SDP approach; 
4.  The adoption of education SWA as a long-term operational strategy, setting out clear milestones and work programmes for the transition; 
5.   The development of work programmes that include well defined targets based on operational partnership arrangements (e.g. signing Statements of Intent, Memoranda of Understanding, Codes of Conduct); 
6.    Ensuring that contributions to development are carefully graduated on a country-by-country basis according to projected volumes of assistance, time scales, advisory capacity and the absorption capacity of the countries concerned; 
7.   The subordination of technical concerns (which were paramount under projects) to broader poverty/social, economic and institutional considerations; 
8.    Funding Agency recruitment criteria and regional/country deployment policy in the light of evolving SWA to education. 

5 Strengths and Weaknesses of Sector Wide Approaches  

Despite a tendency to polarise SWA into two models, the blueprint SIP model and the organic SDP model, in practice all countries develop their own model, an expediency model, that usually combines features of both extremes.  

The blueprint/SIP model essentially treats the sector as a project with pre-defined activities and inputs, heavy emphasis on activity/input accounting and common financial management procedures.  Performance monitoring focuses on sector performance targets at the end of the five-year period.  Financing plans are largely pre-defined.  In summary, the SIP model appears to be reinventing projects in a more complicated guise.  

The evolving/SDP model involves less pre-definition and is guided by a longer-term vision of the outcomes and processes of the sector.  There is less of a focus on inputs, more on outcomes, linked to annual performance review and strategy adjustment.  Budgetary support is tranched against annual review of financing requirements and shortfalls.  Capacity building objectives are central to strategy and monitoring.  

It is not uncommon for an education SWA to exhibit features of both models, particularly during a period of transition to a SWA.  

On the whole, funding agency attributed projects undermine Government leadership, contribute to policy fragmentation, duplicate approaches, distort spending priorities and insufficiently address institutional development and sustainability issues.  The tradition of stand-alone programme implementation units (PIUs) drains capacity of Government’s own management systems, creates managerial overload fielding separate funding agency missions and distorts salary scales and other incentives.  Programme aid, though more flexible, creates uneven, unpredictable stop/start financing of education reforms with additional difficulties in relating budget support to sectoral outcomes.  For Governments, these uncertainties undermine commitment to reform and confidence in the rewards for making hard decisions.  Although an effective SWA undoubtedly has the greater potential for addressing the above risks, there remain a number of worries about SWA:  

•  SWA complexity and potential delay in implementation (preparation may take up to 3 years); 
•  funding agency advisers may face disbursement pressure from programme managers (a common problem within the multi-lateral lending banks with rigid loan pipelines); 
•   the multi-disciplinary environment of SWA can undermine education advisers’ professional identity (usually lodged in knowledge of the sector) creating uncertainty and caution.  

Issues to explore  

1. How and when strategic negotiations and annual review processes should  take place;  
2. Financial commitment and design of modalities; 
3.    Appropriate incentives and sanctions;  
4. The development of realistic conditionalities or ‘undertakings’ that focus on how SWA negotiation will include the process and procedures for linking achievement of targets to budget releases;  
5. Transparency, particularly in the negotiation process and technical and financial monitoring and reporting procedures; 
6.  operational plans that detail new forms of joint undertakings, especially issues of negotiation process, partnership arrangements and monitoring/reporting procedures, as opposed to narrower sectoral management/implementation issues.  

6 New Government - Funding Agency Partnerships  

There does not appear to be a common formula for the start-up or transition towards an Education SWA.  However, two approaches seem to be emerging:  

1.   a signing on or ‘pledging’ approach, (e.g. Cambodia, Ghana, and Ethiopia), often, but not necessarily, linked to the preparation of a blueprint SIP and Government/funding agency round table; 
2.  a more ragged rolling start, (e.g. Uganda, India, Mozambique), often based around a few funding agency allies.  

A common feature is that Government-funding agency tensions and inter-funding agency tensions grow as the process develops.  One major source of tension appears to be when individual funding agencies have to subsume their own agendas and projects within a common agenda and process.  A second source is concern over funding agency labelling that is often manifested through anxieties over management and audit of their own funds.   

Several lessons are emerging on the process of SWA start-up and transition:  

• strong leadership and openness within Government is essential to maintain confidence in the process;  
•  formal signing up to agreed procedures seems to help secure relations (although surprisingly few examples of such formalities exist at present);  
•  both sides of the partnership can find it difficult to come to terms with what strategic negotiation actually means in practice (and dominant Government partners can present just as much a threat as over-bearing funding agency groups); 
•  the process requires frequent on-the-ground presence with authority for negotiation being ceded to a funding agencies representative;  
•  the need to formalise these processes as quickly as possible in order to secure an effective process to facilitate the transition from a loose agreement to common development agendas, tighter operational instruments and conflict resolution (through country discussions, Government-funding agency consultative groups, the use of instruments such as Statement of Intent, Memorandum of Understanding, Collaborative Work Programme, Code of Conduct).  

Nurturing these partnerships has significant implications for funding agency staffing arrangements. In instances where technical assistance is used or in-house staff are seconded, Government needs to know the extent to which they are delegated to speak and act authoritatively.  At present such authority is unclear and in some instances leads to misunderstandings within Government and the funding agency community.  

SWA have significant implications for the role and management of consultancy and technical assistance.  The way in which SWA have developed to date suggest that many funding agency advisory staff will increasingly act in a consultancy role.  The skill mix of consultants is already shifting towards supporting Government policy/strategy analysis, helping to set up performance monitoring systems, designing financial management/tracking systems and facilitating annual review exercises.  Increasingly Government is managing consultancy support, rather than using external managing agents.  

SWA require advisers and long-term in-country technical assistants with broad-based negotiation and professional skills rather than traditional sectoral experience.  As is already happening, sourcing of staff will become more diversified, looking increasingly towards international management consulting firms, specialist groups and development institutes rather than relying on university education departments and education authorities.  Any role for managing agents or international consortia will depend on their ability to provide new skills and assist in building up Government’s capacity to manage/monitor TA support.  

7 Sector Wide Approaches to Education: Lessons     Learned  

There appear to be roughly 25 – 30 education SWA in progress, mainly in African and Asian countries.  Information on developments in South America, Caribbean and Pacific is more patchy.  The vast majority of examples remain at design or pre-implementation stages, meaning that lessons learned to date are mostly concerned with design, appraisal and planning issues.  

Issues and Recommendations to explore  

The following points are in the form of recommendations and are based on wide-ranging experience accumulated in recent years.  They may be considered as minimum necessary conditions for SWA and are directed towards funding agencies and their employees.  

1. The provision of support for national leadership and champions of reform, including support for (and from) key politicians, sector specialists, community groups and finance ministries;  
2.  Formulation of a long-term vision and strategy for reform that focuses on changes in service quality and processes, and that is flexible enough to allow for regular strategy adjustment;  
3.  The management of SWA planning needs through existing governmental structures rather than inventing parallel structures;  
4.  Supporting Government management systems, through early incorporation of capacity building strategies and outcomes into SWA designs;  
5.  The development of joint agreements on interim and long-term arrangements for strengthening financial management and monitoring systems;  
6. The strengthening of SWA financial/budget planning systems, including setting SWA within a broader MTEF, carefully linking strategic targets to forward budget plans and promoting a sense of budget realism within education ministries;  
7.   The development of country specific solutions to management problems;  
8.  The negotiation of procedures that avoid funding agency attribution;  
9.  The careful development of and support for management processes and capacity building ahead of and during planning and implementation (SWA cannot easily be bolted on to top-down, command and control bureaucracies);  
10. The strengthening of education sector performance monitoring systems (not just macro-targets, but service quality indicators, changes in planning/management processes at all levels and regular surveys of service satisfaction with parents and communities);  
11. The design of effective incentives for system performance and individuals (linked to broader long-term public service pay policies).  

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