Ownership and capacity: Do current donor approaches help or hinder the achievement of international...

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International Journal of Educational Development 25 (2005) 445–455

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Ownership and capacity: Do current donor approacheshelp or hinder the achievement of international and national

targets for education?$

Harvey Smith1

CfBT, 60 Queens Road, Reading RG1 4BS, UK

Abstract

Donor-initiated changes in aid delivery, to sector-wide approaches and direct budget support, have coincided with

the focus on global development goals. Although intended to make funding more efficient and strengthen local

ownership, they can stretch limited capacity. Literature on implementation of large-scale education reforms identifies

three key sustainability factors related to policy, capacity and infrastructure. Current donor approaches targeting policy

and budget may not adequately build the capacity required to improve quality and create sustainable reform of

education systems. Building capacity is likely to be more critical than ownership; ignoring school-level capacity reduces

the likelihood that targets will be achieved.

r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Economic development; Educational change; Technical assistance

1. Introduction

Over the last decade a number of donor-initiated changes in the approach to aid deliveryhave run parallel to the increasing focus oninternational goals and targets. Principal amongthese are sector-wide approaches (SWAps) and the

e front matter r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserve

dudev.2005.04.007

d updated version of a paper presented at the

tional Conference on Education and Develop-

r 2003.

ess: [email protected].

pressed are those of the author and not

fBT or of any other agency.

shift towards direct budget support (DBS). Onemight expect that such aid disbursement mechan-isms are intended to facilitate the achievement ofthe key education development goals, but thiscannot be taken for granted. The extent to whichthese recent aid instruments are compatible withachieving either the Millennium DevelopmentGoals (MDGs) or national objectives for educa-tion sector reform and quality improvementtherefore requires analysis.

Following the declarations of the 1990 and 2000education forums in Jomtien and Dakar, donorsupport for education is largely intended to enable

d.

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H. Smith / International Journal of Educational Development 25 (2005) 445–455446

partner countries to bring about a large-scalereform in education systems: greater access, great-er equity, relevant curricula and materials, appro-priate teaching and learning, leading to literatecitizens contributing to economic and socialdevelopment and sustainable reduction in poverty.Laudable aims, but there is a considerableliterature on sustainable large-scale educationreforms, including why they often fail, and it ispertinent to ask to what extent donor agencieshave absorbed the findings of such studies andintegrated them into their approaches to educationsector support. Do the new aid disbursementmechanisms reflect what we as educators knowabout the processes of sustainable behaviourchange?

The paper reviews briefly the directions donorshave been moving in, then looks at what is knownabout sustainable large-scale education sectorreform, and considers the extent to which thesedonor approaches facilitate what is required. Twokey factors highlighted in both the developmentand the education sector reform literature arecapacity and ownership: these factors and thebalance between them are considered in moredetail. The paper concludes by looking at howappropriate the balance now seems to be, ifsustainable quality improvement in education isto be achieved.

2. Context and terminology: ownership and

capacity

During the last decade developing countrieshave been encouraged to develop their ownPoverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) which,when ‘approved’ by the donor community, led bythe World Bank and International MonetaryFund, are then intended to guide donor support.Given the relationship between education andpoverty reduction, progress in developing theeducation sector is generally a key part of suchnational poverty reduction strategies.

A key element of the PRSP process has been therequirement that each PRSP is developed by thecountry itself in a participatory way, thus devel-oping national (rather than donor agency) owner-

ship (Oxfam, 2004). Yet, as Brown et al. (2001)note, government ownership is widely referred tobut less often defined. Their own attempt at anoperational meaning is: ‘‘the extent to whichpriorities are backed by budget allocation and byconfronting difficult policy and programmechoices which will determine whether the pro-gramme can be implemented’’ (p. 8). The 2003symposium on capacity development organised byJICA and partners identified strong leadership andpolitical commitment as the basis for nationalownership, while recognising that the concept iscomplex and includes issues to do with the waypower and leadership are exercised (UNDP et al.,2003, pp. 11–12). Within change managementmore generally, including education reform (seebelow), ownership of the change—usually requir-ing participation in decision making leading to astrong commitment to see the change happen—isseen as an essential ingredient.

However much governments may ‘own’ thePRSP process, their capacity to implement povertyreduction programmes may be inadequate (Brownet al., 2001, p. 39). The concept of local capacity,and the need to build or develop it, has become akey issue within development assistance and hasbeen strongly linked to the concept of technicalassistance (TA) or technical cooperation (e.g.Fukuda-Parr et al., 2002). At the JICA andpartners’ 2003 symposium on capacity develop-ment, ‘‘Capacity was also considered as a pre-requisite for achieving the millennium develop-ment goalsy the centrality of capacity develop-ment to the overall development process was suchthat capacity development deserved to be treatednot only as a means to achieving developmentoutcomes but as a legitimate development goal initself’’ (UNDP et al., 2003, p. 13).

Fukuda-Parr et al. (2002) define capacity as ‘‘theability to perform functions, solve problems, andset and achieve objectives’’ but note that ascountries develop they have to develop differentcapacities and that national capacity is more thanjust the sum of individual capacities (pp. 8–9).Capacity development is therefore seen as takingplace ‘‘not just in individuals, but also betweenthem, in the institutions and the networks theycreate’’, as not just human resource development

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H. Smith / International Journal of Educational Development 25 (2005) 445–455 447

but a larger concept which needs to be addressedat three levels: individual, institutional and societal(pp. 9–10).

But not all see it in these positive terms.Lavergne and Saxby (2001) see the concept ascomplex and difficult to grasp and operationalise,and ask the question: ‘‘Is all developmentnot fundamentally about capacity development?’’(p. 2). Langthaler (2003, p. 3) describes capacitydevelopment as having a very broad variety ofmeanings and the term risks becoming a mean-ingless buzzword: ‘‘Within the international devel-opment community it is being referred to as aninstrument, a process, an objective, a generalapproach to development and the reason for aswell as the overall solution to the failure of manydevelopment attempts so far.’’ Nevertheless, sheacknowledges that in general there is a consensusthat it is ‘‘an inherently positive concept’’, whichfor education means ‘‘to support and fosterproblem-solving capacities in the South.’’

UNDP et al.’s (2003) view of capacity adds tothe concept of ability the notion of willingness, sothat ownership is also seen as central to capacitydevelopment. However, while there can be littledoubt that a willing learner (whether individual,institutional or societal) will increase their capacitymore effectively than an unwilling one, ownershipof the capacity development process is notnecessarily the same as ownership of the changefor which capacity needs to be built (which may bedonor-driven rather than locally initiated change).This potential tension between capacity and own-ership is discussed further below.

References are made below to Rwanda, as anexample of a country which has received majordonor support since the 1994 genocide and whichhas recently (since 2000) been going through theprocess of developing its PRSP (Government ofRwanda, 2002) and is now following it up. Thevision and policies which have been adopted by theGovernment over the last few years, concentratingon reconciliation between the communities, stabi-lity and economic growth, have been welcomed bythe donor community, and financial managementis generally considered sound and not blighted bycorruption (DFID, 2004). Education is seen as akey to poverty reduction and to reconciliation, and

the Government has been going through a wide-ranging review and reconsideration of its educa-tion system and strategies. But while this process ishaving a major impact on the planning andfinancing of the sector, it cannot yet be said tohave an impact on what goes on in the classroom.

As elsewhere, aid modalities in Rwanda aremixed—with some donors preferring traditionalprojects, some broader programmes of sectoralsupport and others direct support to the Govern-ment budget, and in some cases a mixture of allthree. This mix is true of the education sector,where the major bilateral donor in the sector,DFID, has provided funds directly for theGovernment budget tied to progress in developingthe education sector, has funded a sector-wideprogramme of support (the Rwandan EducationSector Support Programme) and has funded anumber of distinct projects.

3. Donor approaches

Current approaches to supporting developmentare characterised by

�
an emphasis on goals and targets, generallyexpressed as quantitative achievements, such asthe MDGs;
�
the promotion of SWAps; � a move from delivering aid through projects and
programmes to providing DBS.

All three reflect donor perspectives intended tomake aid agency funding more efficient. They arealso presented as moving the responsibility forplanning and prioritising to the aid-receivinggovernments and thereby strengthening owner-ship.

3.1. Goals and targets

Why are goals and targets so significant? As thesubtitle of the 2003 Human Development Reportgrandly puts it: ‘Millennium Development Goals:a compact among nations to end human poverty’(UNDP, 2003). They are described there as ‘‘a setof benchmarks for assessing progress—and for

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enabling poor people to hold political leadersaccountable. They help people fight for thekinds of policies and actions that will create decentjobs, improve access to schools and root outcorruption’’ (p. 1). While such excessive claimsinvite cynicism, especially in those who workwith the great majority of poor people who havenever heard of the MDGs, the existence ofsuch goals does nevertheless encourage policymakers and planners to have a sense of workingtowards something which has some global sig-nificance, and to set their own intermediatenational targets.

If all education planners in developing countrieshad to do was to concentrate on achieving theeducation MDGs of universal primary education(UPE) and ending gender disparity, life would stillbe difficult, but not as hard as it is in reality, asthese goals are not all that education systems areexpected to achieve. Even the Dakar Frameworkcommitments require balancing these with effortsto achieve significant improvements outside pri-mary education, such as expanding early child-hood care, achieving 50% improvement in adultliteracy levels, and improving the quality andrelevance of education across the board (WorldEducation Forum, 2000); and most countries havetheir own national targets too. In resource-poorcountries effective planning of intermediate tar-gets, prioritising between demands—especiallyquantity/quality trade-offs—and identifying re-sources, especially in the context of the HIV/AIDSepidemic, can stretch limited capacity.

3.2. Sector-wide approach

The defining characteristics of a SWAp havebeen stated as that ‘‘all significant funding for thesector supports a single sector policy and expen-diture programme, under Government leadership,adopting common approaches across the sector,and progressing towards relying on Governmentprocedures to disburse and account for all funds’’(Brown et al., 2001, p. 7). The emphasis on‘Government’ is significant. The SWAp has beenseen as a reaction against the project approach,which is portrayed as distorting priorities andresource allocation, as being possibly divisive, and

as tending to use donor imposed disbursement andaccounting procedures rather than using, andstrengthening, the government’s own procedures.

Donor support for SWAps focuses on facilitat-ing policy development, strategic planning, finan-cial and resource management and partnerships—key competences for moving on towards a stagewhere donors can be less directly involved. ButSWAps in turn require a higher level of capacityfor national education sector decision-making—especially in respect of planning, prioritising andperformance monitoring—than when financingwas linked to donor-identified projects. They alsorequire a capacity for high-level policy dialoguewith donors, who still present sometimes conflict-ing messages.

3.3. Direct budget support

The introduction of SWAps, as in Rwanda, hasbeen accompanied by a move towards providingfunding through DBS and away from projects orTA. The UK’s 2000 White Paper on InternationalDevelopment, which encouraged ‘‘nationallyowned poverty reduction strategies’’, committedthe Government, where circumstances were right,to ‘‘moving towards providing financial supportdirectly to recipient government budgets usingtheir own systems’’ (United Kingdom, 2000,p. 93). To give one example of what this meansin practice, DFID’s Country Assistance Plan forRwanda for 2003–2006 states that two-thirds ofDFID’s programme will be DBS (DFID, 2004,p. 17).

Conditions for such budget support may be tied(as they have been in Rwanda) to sector progressindicators, to broad sector outputs or to broaderpoverty reduction targets. Whatever they arelinked to, DBS requires of education ministriesan even higher level of dialogue with donors,relating to national policy and strategic issues,including an understanding of the poverty reduc-tion processes to which improvements in theeducation sector can contribute. It also requires adifferent sort of capacity in donors—the ability tomaintain a policy dialogue and monitor perfor-mance, but no longer the capacity to manageprogrammes or projects. Indeed, one of the main

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attractions of DBS is that it is easier for the donorsto manage.

4. Sustainable large-scale education reform

Whether we are talking here about commitmentto international targets, SWAps or educationsector conditions tied to DBS, somebody some-where has to bring about ‘development’. Currentdonor approaches emphasise policy, planning andmonitoring of performance, but this is the tip ofthe iceberg. The real task is bringing aboutimproved quality of teaching/learning—creatingwhat Adams (2002, p. 28) calls ‘‘a sustainablelearning environment of acceptable quality’’. Thismeans getting the curriculum right and getting itused, getting acceptable learning materials intoschools and getting teachers to use them, gettingteachers and therefore teacher training to anacceptable level of quality, getting schools mana-ged effectively, and so on: in other words, in manycountries bringing about large-scale reform of theeducation system.

Over the last three decades there has been aconsiderable literature on the implementation oflarge-scale education reforms in developed anddeveloping countries (the latter perspective found,for example, in Havelock and Huberman, 1977;Fullan, 1989; Lewin, 1991; and Hurst’s (1983)review of the literature on education change indeveloping countries). There is a general percep-tion that education reforms are more likely to failthan succeed (Smith, 1998) and detailed casestudies of large-scale education reform projects indeveloping countries which have not achieved theirobjectives, such as Operation Blackboard in India(Dyer, 1993) and Trinidad and Tobago’s ThirdEducation Project (London, 1993), have helpedidentify the sort of mismatch between intentionand capacity to implement which can lead tofailure.

A synthesis of the literature on large-scaleeducation reform—part of a recent study under-taken for CeBT following an evaluation of theUK’s national reform of literacy and numeracystrategies—concludes that there are three keyfactors on which the embedding and sustaining

of such reform is contingent (Earl et al., 2003).Earl et al define these as

�
government policyJ policy leversJ resource allocation
�
school capacityJ understanding and motivationJ teachers’ capacity: knowledge, skills, disposi-
tionsJ local leadershipJ capacity for changeJ school and community support for reform

�
infrastructureJ resources and professional developmentJ making connectionsJ developing and supporting leadershipJ building professional communities of prac-
ticeJ using data and monitoring for decision

makingJ managing turbulence and transitions.

Not surprisingly, much of what is in this listwould be seen in the literature on managingchange in any sector or organisation (high-levelpolicy commitment, capacity and motivation forchange, a supporting infrastructure). Much ofeducation is about behaviour change and aseducators we are familiar with some of the issues,but in education reform we are talking aboutchanging not just the behaviour of learners but thebehaviour of teachers, teacher educators, headteachers, curriculum developers and so on. Suchbehaviour change requires extensive time andintensive input and requires developing a criticalmass of change champions. Successful change alsohas to be bottom up as well as top down—in otherwords, as the list of factors above demonstrates,just getting the top right is not going to be enough.

5. Impact of the donor approaches on the reform

factors

On the assumption that donors intend theirfunding to result in this sort of behaviour changein education, it is appropriate to ask to what

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extent their focus on MDGs, SWAps and DBStends to facilitate the delivery of such reforms.Using Earl et al.’s three categories above (butvarying the order):

(1)
Government policy. This is the level where,according to the donors’ own rhetoric, they seethemselves as having the greatest impact,through policy dialogue and developing localownership of the reform process at the senior-most level. Negotiations on targets and onbudget support conditions and the partnershipprocesses which underlie SWAps will allcontribute to this. The funding made availablethrough budget support will also make it easierfor governments to make the resources avail-able for reform, and if the support is condi-tional on appropriate progress in the educationsector then policy levers may also be in place.All three approaches will impact on this factor.
(2)
Infrastructure. This requires having, or putting,the necessary support structures and systems inplace which will enable the resources to bringabout change. Setting international targets oragreeing conditions for budget support will notcreate an infrastructure, and even the sort ofDBS conditions agreed upon are unlikely torelate specifically to the issues included in thisfactor. A condition certainly provides anincentive (especially if seen as stick rather thancarrot), but does not in itself bring about thedesired change. Targets and DBS on their ownare therefore likely to have little direct impacthere. Donor support for SWAps, on the otherhand, would normally include strengtheningthe infrastructure, and the sort of senior levelcapacity building which is part of SWApsmay directly facilitate getting what is neededinto place.
(3)
School capacity. ‘‘No one is in any doubt thatthe chief agent in the process of educationalreform is the teacher’’ (UNESCO, 1993, p. 1).Neither setting targets nor providing budgetsupport activates school-level skills. DBS canof course make it easier to buy the expertise todo this if that is seen as a priority, but also onlyif the skills are readily available to be bought,and if the school or education authority has
the capacity to define, source, procure, manageand monitor the necessary inputs. This there-fore requires capacity which in countries suchas Rwanda is far from being in place. Donorsupport for SWAps does help build the higherlevel capacity, but SWAps by their nature aremore concerned with the central educationmanagement level than with directly buildingcapacity at the level of the school.

Thus, according to this very limited analysis, inrelation to the three key education reform factors,setting targets and providing DBS clearly influencegovernment policy, but are unlikely to have muchdirect impact on infrastructure or school capacity.SWAps, on the other hand, influence policy andinfrastructure, but their influence on capacity ismost likely to be at the central and possiblyregional education management levels rather thanin schools.

6. Recognising the need to focus on capacity

Education itself is about developing capacity. Inno circumstances would we say that, to do thiswell, all schools need is support for their budgets.We expect to see a methodology and people withthe skills to implement it, effort put into training,retraining, upgrading staff, developing new ap-proaches and curricula, etc. Even in the UK,where teachers are generally considered to be wellqualified and schools generally well managed,there has been an incredible effort put intobuilding capacity to deliver literacy and numeracyskills in primary schools, with major programmesof curriculum and materials development andteacher retraining, and with a whole new supportinfrastructure put in place. The UK has themanpower and the appropriate skills to do this,but, by definition, countries without these humanresources do not.

However, the move towards budget supportcertainly does not mean that the issue of capacityis now overlooked. On the contrary, it continues tobe recognised as a serious issue both by the donorsand the ‘partner’ governments. For example: in2000 Sida, which is perhaps moving less fast than

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DFID towards DBS, published its Policy forCapacity Development and described the problemof international development cooperation as in-creasingly ‘‘shortcomings in the human capital,management capacity, and organisational struc-tures of the recipient countries’’ (Sida, 2000,pp. 17–18); in 2002 UNDP published a majorstudy on ‘Capacity for Development’ (Fukuda-Parr et al., 2002), proposing a new paradigm forcapacity development; in 2003 JICA, UNDP, theWorld Bank Institute and CIDA held an interna-tional symposium on capacity development andaid effectiveness (UNDP et al., 2003).

More specifically, the following examples fromthree countries currently experiencing donor sup-ported SWAps show how capacity constraints arestill being identified as key:

(a)
In Uganda, often cited as the SWAp successstory and therefore a strong candidate for DBSto replace direct TA, as recently as 2002 theMinistry of Education noted that there are stillconsiderable challenges:� ‘‘Ministerial restructuring has revealed some
inadequacies, particularly given the in-creased volume and complexity of workand shortage of personnel.

� Staff does not possess all the necessarystrategic planning, statistical analysis, mod-elling, negotiation, or monitoring and eva-luation skills, among others.

� Staff development and support systems arenot sufficient to create a cadre of highlymotivated, committed personnel.

� The procedures and machinery necessary forcoordinating government-wide undertakings(sector-wide audits, teacher recruitment) arenot yet fully developed.’’ (Malinga, 2002, p. 8)

(b)
The ADEA Working Group on Sector Analy-sis, in its review of a study of the Mozambiqueeducation SWAp, notes that this study ‘demo-nises’ projects and praises SWAp, but adds:‘‘The tension seems to be in moving from thebad, old project assistance approach to thegood, new SWAp, without adequately con-sidering the fundamental difficulties of thelatter. One of these, which the MINED[Ministry of Education] is working hard to
overcome, is the relatively weak capacity ofgovernment, as one of the many partners, totake full responsibility’’ (ADEA, 2002, p. 23).

(c)
In Rwanda, the Strategic Partnership withAfrica review mission in 2002 noted that:‘‘Government representatives mentionedstrong concerns about current aid arrange-ments, including:y� an ineffective and inappropriate supply of
TA, and/or insufficient attention given tocapacity buildingy

� the tendency to fill gaps and write moredetailed ‘action plans’ for Government withinsufficient attention to capacity buil-dingy’’ (Strategic Partnership with Africa,2002, p. 4).

More emphatically, DFID’s Country AssistancePlan for Rwanda for 2003–2006 (while stating thattwo-thirds of its programme will continue to beDBS) refers to the risk to successful implementa-tion of Rwanda’s Poverty Reduction Strategyfrom the ‘‘weak institutional capacity of theGovernment’’ and describes the public adminis-tration as ‘‘riven with capacity constraints’’(DFID, 2004, pp. 8–9).

The issue is therefore not whether DBS isalready replacing all support for institutionalcapacity building—it is not, and indeed in RwandaDFID and other donors are committed to provid-ing considerable further capacity building supportfor the education sector. Instead, the issues are:

�
whether the balance between DBS and supportfor capacity building is right, in particularwhether DBS can be effective before capacityhas been built; and
�
whether the support for capacity building istargeted at the right levels of the educationsystem.
7. The role of ownership

The MDGs are seen as requiring commitmentsfrom national leaders, and national ownership isthe key to their success (UNDP, 2003, pp. 1–2).The key arguments in support of DBS are that it

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makes aid agency funding more efficient and movesthe responsibility for planning and prioritising tothe aid-receiving governments, thereby strengthen-ing ownership (DFID, 2003). Ownership has evenbeen seen as a means to achieving capacity withoutdirect external support: ‘‘The process of takingresponsibility for one’s own development will leadto strengthening national capacities. The learningprocess is part of designing, planning and guidingthe programs—tasks which the countries mustassume. Thisytrend, which has been adopted inthe sector-wide approaches and in poverty-reduc-tion strategies, forgoes traditional technical assis-tance and enjoins countries to ‘learn to build bybuilding’’’ (Ndoye, 2002, p. 2).

But there are indications that SWAps and DBSmay not always result in the sort of ownershipintended. In spite of commitments by someagencies to improve coordination and move toharmonisation, most still have different proce-dures and priorities and host governments stillhave to please different agencies in different ways,downgrading their own priorities. Some agencies,in particular the development banks, still insist ontheir own procedures rather than building minis-tries’ capacity to take control. Conversely, Kingand McGrath (2002, p. 22) suggest that bettercoordination between agencies leads to govern-ments being faced with a more concerted agencyposition which may reduce national ownership.Performance indicators or targets linked toSWAps and DBS conditions are likely to be thoseseen as significant by donors rather than those theministry might choose for its own accountabilityto government or parliament, and may reflect whatis easiest to assess rather than genuine localpriorities. Further, budget support may be morelikely to lead to aid dependency than TA would.

Is government ownership the key to qualityimprovement in education? SWAps tend to focuspower, funds and capacity building efforts oncentral government, and this is then reinforced bythe move towards budget support, but in order toimprove the quality of education it is not only atthe level of government that we should be lookingto strengthen ownership. The real driver forquality improvement is likely to be in the schoolcommunities, especially the parents, and strength-

ening the ownership of decision-making by parentsand civil society will not be greatly affected byreciting the MDGs or putting money into govern-ment budgets.

8. The role of technical assistance in developing

capacity and ownership

So-called ‘TA’ has had a bad press over the lastdecade. But the Rwandan minister of educationonce said he would rather have more TA and lessbudget support, as TA was more use to him.Budget support goes to the national treasury; TAboth fills gaps in the ministry’s capacity and buildsthe capacity of ministry staff. When underpressure to produce results fast—especially tomeet donor deadlines—people, not budget sup-port, help the minister achieve that. The risk isthat, when donor-driven pressure for rapid plan-ning and prioritising means key decision-makingdeadlines arise before capacity has been built, thetechnical advisers may then be pressurised intomaking the decisions, so ownership is weakened.

‘TA’ (the British and some other agencies havepreferred ‘technical cooperation’) is interpreted indifferent ways. Originally it was a means for donorcountries to provide expertise to fill gaps inhuman-resource-poor governments, in some caseswhile local staff were being trained overseas. Butfor the last two decades TA has largely had a skillstransfer role, in other words, its primary purposehas been to build capacity. For the Swedishgovernment aid agency, instead of ‘transfer ofknowledge’, ‘‘Sida prefers to use the conceptdevelopment of knowledge in order to show thatlearning requires the active processing of knowl-edge and that solutions are developed in a processof give and take between several parties’’ (Sida,2000, p. 19). According to this approach, bringingforeign expertise with its particular kind of knowl-edge and skills together with people who work in acountry’s public administration with their differentkind of knowledge and experience can successfullybring about new and creative solutions.

Sida’s approach goes some way to meeting thecriticism that ‘transfer of knowledge’ represents anasymmetrical relationship and that there should be

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a shift to knowledge ‘acquisition’ (Fukuda-Parr etal., 2002, pp. 10–14). At least in theory, bilateralagency support for SWAps and DBS is encoura-ging a move from supply-driven (ie donor identi-fied) TA to demand-driven TA. This is more likewhat ministries in developed countries do—buy inshort-term technical staff and consultants oncontract primarily to fill skill gaps rather thanfor capacity building. What is different, though, isthat it is relatively easy for developed countryministries to articulate what knowledge or skillsthey need and then identify and contract out theexpertise they do not have in-house. For develop-ing country authorities, even when they have thefunds, there are simply not the same opportunitiesto identify the gaps and contract out the work,with the result that capacity gaps are notadequately filled and capacity building is re-stricted. The further away one moves from thecentral ministry to decentralised authorities andthe school, which is where the changes need tohappen, the truer this becomes.

9. Getting the balance right

The intention here has not been to criticise theMDGs, SWAps or DBS in themselves, as all havean important role to play in development. Supportfor SWAps in particular, which has been strength-ened through the link with national povertyreduction strategies, is effectively building bothcapacity for and ownership of the reform processby ministries of education—certainly the DFIDsupport programme for the Rwandan educationSWAp has made a truly remarkable difference indecision-making capacity in the education ministrywithin just 2–3 years. The intention has been toexamine the extent to which any of theseapproaches provides the support required to bringabout sustainable large-scale education sectorreform, in particular the vast improvement ineducation quality which many developing coun-tries need to achieve. Two key issues wereidentified above:

(1)
The balance between DBS and support for
capacity building

On the one hand, donors require an evergreater capacity on the part of poorly re-sourced ministries to appreciate the complexrelationships between education and povertyreduction, undertake long-term planning,prioritise between competing demands, andso on. On the other hand, the move away fromproviding TA to providing cash to centralgovernments is potentially taking away fromdecision-makers the support needed if thecapacity to undertake these high-level tasks isto be built, and built rapidly. Where areministries to get this capacity from? The moveto DBS may be giving the wrong impressionthat money is the only answer. While there is alot which cannot be done without money,simply coming up with the cash is not thesolution—and indeed the relationship betweenfinancial resources and education outcomes isby no means clear (Al-Samarrai, 2002).Change is a process: DBS alone is unlikely tocreate the necessary catalysts for change.Donor agencies should not lose sight of thevalue they can add, through their wider andlonger experience of what works elsewhere andtheir ability to bring in expertise.As has been seen, both education ministriesand donor partners recognise that govern-ments may not have the capacity to do all thatis required to meet key development targets.DBS adds to the challenges by requiringstronger management and performance mon-itoring systems; but putting TA in to buildcapacity results in some loss of ownership.Which is more important: ownership of thetargets or the capacity to achieve them? As aRwandan colleague put it, ‘‘There is no pointin saying that the government should be in thedriving seat if it does not know how to drive.Teach it how to drive first.’’

(2)
Where to target capacity building
To bring about the sort of large-scale reformneeded in the quality of teaching and learningrequires a considerable capacity building ef-fort, not just a matter of training a few seniorpeople. There is a need to create a critical massof change champions across public adminis-tration and the education system. As change

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needs to be bottom up as well as top down, thismeans facilitating participation and grass rootchanges, and developing mechanisms forbringing policy and grass root movementstogether. Making this happen requires targetedsupport. As donor-driven decision-makingmoves further up the hierarchy and away fromthe classroom, other means need to be foundwhich will impact positively on the quality ofeducation in the classroom. Sector-wide plan-ning has not replaced the need for school-levelplanning.

As the overview of large-scale education reformfactors has shown, to bring about the educationquality reforms needed, local capacity, howeveracquired or delivered, will have more impact thanlocal ownership, and should be given top priorityfor donor funding. Unless ministry, local educa-tion authority and, more importantly, schoolmanagers and teachers genuinely acquire thecapacity to plan and implement quality improve-ments, instead of facilitating the necessary reformsthe donors’ push to move beyond SWAps to DBSmay actually reduce the likelihood that the MDGsand national targets will be achieved. Enablingand facilitating the acquisition of this capacity isthe real challenge of the next decade.

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