Delivery Units : can they catalyse sustained improvements
in education service delivery ?
Robin Todd, John Martin, Andy Brock
Canberra, 14th February 2014
Improving education quality worldwide
The Context - Common Public Service
Delivery Challenges
•
Lack of clarity as to the practical steps needed to turn national policy
commitments into tangible outcomes.
•
Lack of joined up working at national level - policy priorities falling across
or between Ministries with unclear accountability for results.
•
National level challenge to ensure quality of delivery when responsibility
is devolved to local level. If results are poor in one local area it is still the
national government which gets the blame for this!
•
Focus on process and procedures rather than outcomes - little sense of
urgency to make a positive difference.
•
Lack of local level understanding of national commitments means that
intended results are never realised. Shang mian you zheng ce, xia mian you
dui ce
One answer ? – Delivery Units
• Why ?
• To drive performance improvements in critical service
delivery areas
• To inject urgency into dealing with delivery challenges
Defining Characteristics of Delivery Units
• Must be accompanied by real willingness from the very
top of government to change behaviour and improve
outcomes.
• Receives authority directly from the top
• Sits outside government structures
• PMDU under Blair 2001 ; <40 ; cross-government ;
narrow focus
• Later replicated / adapted in USA, Australia, Malaysia,
Tanzania etc.
Defining Characteristics of Delivery Units
• Focus relentlessly on
performance
• Data analysis and presentation
essential
• Linking the leadership to
delivery on the ground
Performance
policy
Performance
monitoring
Capacity
building
• Unblocking delivery obstacles
• Building relationships and
capacity
Unblockin
g delivery
obstacles
Delivery Units in developing countries
Case 1 - Pakistan
•
Punjab province – Chief Minister of Punjab Shahbaz Sharif is key driver.
Support is from Professor M Barber and team personally “This time it’s
going to be different”
•
Separate team established under Barber. Recruited 900 District Monitoring
Officers (ex-army) to visit all 60,000 schools every month
•
Monthly meetings with Chief Minister – personalised. Quarterly stocktakes –
detailed analysis
•
Achievements according to Barber :
– Enrolment : “Extra 1.5m children (aged 5-16) in school”
– Attendance : 82% baseline (8/2011) had risen to 92% (12/2012)
– Teacher presence : 80% baseline (8/2011) had risen to 91% (12/2012)
•
“Irreversibility not sustainability” – example of Madhya Pradesh 2006-2008
change of Chief Minister
Pakistan – the verdict ?
•
Positives
– Political engagement : things are happening ; aligns with power structure
– Focus on tangible issues and results
•
Negatives
– World Bank (Das) has questioned scope of some of the achievements – would
they have happened anyway
– Heavily dependent on key individuals and their political capital
– Heavily dependent on parallel structures
•
Uncertain
– Costly ? Costly not to ?
– How deep are the changes - more than cosmetic ?
Case 2 - Tanzania
•
Called Big Results Now ! Covering 6 sectors : Education, Energy,
Agriculture, Water, Transport and Resource Mobilisation
•
Strongly influenced by Malaysia – support provided by Malaysia
•
In education focus is on improving quality of primary and secondary
education through nine activity strands and 3 targets known as National Key
Results Area :
•
–
To create transparency on 3R skills levels in standard II
–
To achieve 80%+ pass rate in Primary PSLE exams
–
To achieve 80%+ pass rates in Secondary CSEE Exams
Education MDU responsible for driving, reporting and supporting –
performance monitoring phase
Tanzania – Progress ?
•
Too early to see results (only launched in August 2013) but some issues
arising include :
–
Quality and flow of data – without this performance management difficult
–
Are there too many activities, creating less focus and dissipated energy ?
–
Is the reporting culture ready for this ?
•
The Malaysian connection – looking in the right direction ?
•
Nonetheless :
–
A window of change has opened (though for how long ?
–
High levels of awareness – a debate about change
–
MDU mix of staff is promising
–
Public officials focusing on outcomes and performance rather than process and protocols
Delivery Units - can they deliver sustained
improvements ?
•
Catalysing opportunity for changing culture – but what conditions will make
it sustainable ? Irreversible ?
•
Does it depend on the right people at the right time ? Can it be
systematised?
•
Is the narrow focus – just a few key indicators – enough to sustain change ?
•
Data quality, timeliness, analytical capacity – big assumptions
•
Perhaps better for technically simple issues ?
•
Can DU’s shift systems ? Can they shift as well from poor to adequate as
from adequate to excellent ?
Sustained improvements ?
Figure 1: Outputs and Outcomes classified by Technical Complexity and Political Difficulty
THANK YOU
Andy.Brock@camb-ed.com
Initial DU work
Mature phase DU work
Performance
policy
Performance
monitoring
Capacity
building
Unblocking
delivery
obstacles
Capacity
building
Unblocking
delivery
obstacles
Performance
policy
Performance
monitoring