THE MAJOR
PROJECT
OF EDUCATION
in Latin America and the Caribbean
Summary
Presentation
2
Secondary education in the Caribbean
Errol Miller
3
Coordination of external assistance to education in Latin America and the Caribbean
Robert McMeekin
18
Devaluation and privatization of education in Latin America
Luis Ratinoff
49
A debate beyond frontiers: Regional Office for Education’s Tele-seminars
Arturo Matute
72
UNESCO/SANTIAGO Publications
BULLETIN 39
Santiago, Chile, April 1996
BOLETIN 24, Enero 1991 / Proyecto Principal de Educación
Presentation
That education constitutes an essential element in the consolidation of democratic, participative
societies that enjoy stable and equitable economic development, has become the sort of consensus
that is finding it very tough to go from discourse to execution.
The task is not the exclusive responsibility of the States but –as never before– that of civil society as
well, which must ensure that knowledge is not the privilege of a few but the right of all citizens.
Progress and development stand little chance, if the opportunity to attain acceptable qualification
levels is not universalized.
Consequently, at the turn of the century, quality of education looms as the major challenge modern
society must face. In order to confront it, the intensification of decentralization initiatives and of
political consensuses that can guarantee the continuity of educational strategies, along with greater
autonomy in terms of school administration and management, the strengthening of curricular
reforms and their emphasis on learning outcomes, are seen as an absolute must.
Timely information exchange becomes a fundamental tool in this process and, in this regard, the
present Bulletin contains articles that certainly make a contribution. Errol Miller describes the
situation and challenges posed by secondary education in non-spanish speaking Caribbean
countries, an article that is sure to strike familiar chords among Latin American educators. The
author, in addition to outlining advances made in terms of coverage, underscores the need to review
the criteria that should be implemented in dealing with the new requirements this education level
presents.
Robert McMeekin, using information gathered by UNESCO-SANTIAGO, discusses external assistance Coordination for education in Latin America and the Caribbean. The study identifies
coordination problems, proposes enhancements strategies, and makes recommendations which will
be analyzed at the next meeting of Ministers of Education in Kingston, Jamaica.
Luis Ratinoff’s “Devaluation and Privatization of Education in Latin America”, reflects upon a
paradoxical situation: while public discourse praises the exalted virtues of education, there are
indexes that would seem to indicate that contemporary societies tend to devaluate education.
According to the author, this phenomenon has been observed not only in public spheres but also in
the private sector, and it is not exclusive to developing countries.
Lastly, Arturo Matute describes the creation of tele-seminars organized by our Office, and comments
on the enthusiastic reception this modern interaction tool has had among the educational centres in
our region.
As is customary, the latest publications by the Regional Office for Education are included in this
issue.
2
Secondary education in the Caribbean. Achievement and challenges / Errol Miller
SECONDARY EDUCATION IN THE CARIBBEAN.
ACHIEVEMENT AND CHALLENGES
Errol Miller*
For the purposes of this paper the Caribbean is defined as the Dutch-speaking
territories of Aruba, the Netherlands Antilles and Surinam, Haiti and the seventeen
English-speaking countries that identify themselves as Caribbean. The Caribbean
designation is a combination of politics, geography and culture. Accordingly, the
definition of the sub-region can shift with the situation. This explains why the
South American countries of Guyana and Surinam, and Belize in Central America,
are often classified with the Caribbean, while Cuba and the Dominican Republic
are designated Latin America in several circumstances. The cultural divisions,
labeled by language, of the geographical Caribbean, Central and South America
are indicative of past imperial relationships which persist.
In addition to the past relationships marked by
language, there are current political factors that
also determine any working definition of the
Caribbean. Martinique and Guadeloupe are
Departments of France. Puerto Rico is part of
the United States. While being located in the
Caribbean Sea geographically, their primary
political relationships are with major industrial powers not in the sub-region.
These are the cultural, geographical and political factors which together generate the rather
quaint definition of the Caribbean used in this
paper. Incidentally, it more or less coincides
with UNESCO’S working relationship with the
sub-region, if Latin America and the Caribbean is defined as the entire region.
The societal, and educational contexts
Secondary education in the Caribbean cannot
be discussed in isolation from the rest of the
* Errol Miller. International Specialist on Education.
educational system or the general society or
be understood without reference to its immediate past in the post-independence period.
However, not all Caribbean countries are sovereign nations. Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat and the
Turks and Caicos Islands remain British Dependencies while Aruba and the Netherlands
Antilles are dependencies in the Kingdom of
the Netherlands. Also, all the sovereign countries, with the exception of Haiti, became independent nations over a twenty year period
stretching from 1962 to 1981. The term “independence era” is therefore used, loosely, as a
label that covers the period from about 1950
to 1985, because this was the dominant theme
and mood of that era.
Broadly speaking it seems accurate to say
that in this independence period education and
the school systems were mobilized to serve
the cause of representative democracy. Adult
suffrage and representative government placed
political power in the hands of those representing the marginal majority in the various
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BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
countries. For the first time in their history the
marginal majority, through their elected representatives, held the levers of state power. This
was true before countries became politically
independent, and remained true for those countries that did not. Education was therefore responding more to the prerogatives of full internal self government than to the changed external relations manifest in sovereignty.
Elected with a mandate to democratize all
the avenues of upward social mobility, to remove discrimination in access to public places,
to equalize opportunity, to create just societies
and to address the needs of the previously disadvantaged, the newly empowered representatives pounced on education and schooling as
the most obvious means of demonstrating their
commitment to that mandate, and possibly for
achieving some of its goals. Secondary education became a prime target of reform and development in this era throughout the sub-region.
Achievements of the independence era
The strategies for achieving equity and equality of opportunity, while employing the unifying rhetoric of nationalism and nation building, could be listed as follows:
– Expansion of the educational provision at all
levels of the education system. Changing of
the rules governing access to the secondary
level particularly to grammar schools.
– Creation of new institutions at the tertiary
level and ensuring equity in access to these
institutions.
– Restructuring of the curriculum to promote
national and Caribbean identity and solidarity
by the inclusion of national and Caribbean
literature, history, geography, specimens and
examples and the inclusion of positive images
of all the peoples that comprise the societies.
– Measures to improve the quality of education
through building national and regional capacity, for example, teacher training, examinations and educational research.
Favorable economic circumstances of the Caribbean in the post-war years up to the mid-
4
1970s facilitated the implementation of these
strategies. In other words, not only was there
the political will to implement these strategies
but; there was also economic means to at least
embark upon their implementation. The independence era is therefore marked by the unusual coincidence of social demand, political
will and economic means.
The achievements of this era are truly impressive by any standards. They can be recited
briefly as follows:
– The vast majority of infants, over 80 per cent,
enrolled in pre-schools compared to less than
30 per cent forty years ago.
– Universal primary education ensuring access
to all children exists within the region, for the
first time in its history.
– Mass secondary education obtains in all countries, ten of which have universal secondary
education. This compares to less than 10 per
cent access to secondary education up to the
end of the 1940s.
– Most children with special disabilities are
now provided for in the public education systems in almost every countries in contrast to
forty years ago when there was no such provision in the public system.
– The establishment of colleges of all types at
the tertiary level making this level of education more accessible to the middle and lower
social strata than ever before.
– The creation of universities serving the needs
of the sub-region in the main areas of scholarship and research.
– Curricula that reflect the peoples and culture
of the region.
– Schools staffed almost entirely by nationals of
the region, the majority of whom are professionally qualified teachers and an existence of
indigenous teacher training capacity to sustain the professional status of teachers.
– Secondary school students assessed by Caribbean institutions, for example the Caribbean
Examinations Council, on curricula appropriate to secondary education in the sub-region.
– Successful non-formal programs in adult literacy and skills training for out-of school
youths.
Secondary education in the Caribbean. Achievement and challenges / Errol Miller
– The more sophisticated management of education through integrated Ministries of Education which replaced the more fragmented
structures of the past supervised by Departments of Education.
– Girls have at least achieved gender equity
with boys at the early childhood, primary and
secondary levels and make even have surpassed them. At the tertiary, males only continue to hold the advantage in engineering
related subjects but have lost it in practically
all other areas, although in the science based
areas the gap is still relatively small.
Specific achievements at the secondary level
Within the general context of educational development, it is important to note that secondary education was a prime subject of policy
making and a principal area of investment.
When educational development in the post-independence period is assessed as a whole, secondary education emerges as the undisputed
area in which the greatest efforts were concentrated. In this regard, there were several specific policy trends and developments that can
be noted. These include:
– Massive expansion of secondary school places.
– The diversification of the curriculum to include technical and vocation subjects. In the
pre-World War II Caribbean only academic or
general education was offered in secondary
schools. Latin was a prominent subject in the
curriculum and the sciences, while taught,
were not emphasized.
– The rising popularity of Business subjects
especially in the last two decades and their
rising pride of place in the curriculum.
– Proliferation of types of secondary schools in
some countries as distinctions were made in
curricula emphasizing the expected further
education or occupation destination of students. Several of the types of schools created
were imitative of comparable types in Europe
or North America. This is particularly marked
by the different types of secondary schools in
the Dutch Caribbean and some Anglo-phone
countries like Jamaica.
– The shift to coeducation and away from single
sex schools, the increased enrollment of girls
to the point where they are the majority of the
secondary students and their performance is
usually better than boys.
– Increase in the size of institutions as student
enrollment outstripped the building of new
schools.
– Transformation of the administration and leadership of schools from headmaster/headmistress to principal emphasizing the increased
complexity and emphasis on school management, sometimes at the expense of instructional leadership.
– Free tuition in all types of secondary schools.
– Selection tests and other transfer mechanisms,
predicated on the twin criteria of merit and
parental choice, seeking to ensure equity in
access to certain types of secondary schools.
– Increased dependence on external donor assistance to finance expansion and capacity
building programs at this level.
Accomplishment and disenchantment
Any objective analysis of the independence period, therefore, has to note its accomplishments
through the mobilization of considerable financial investments, significant paid and voluntary support, and high levels of client participation in the provisions made. There can
be no doubt that the independence period, invoking the themes of nationalism and nation
building, mobilized massive State support and
receive overwhelming popular participation.
Together they took the education system
through both a “paradigm shift” and a “quantum leap”. This included secondary education.
The intriguing question that arises from this
assessment is, given these remarkable achievements, why at the end of this period, the end
of the 1980s, was there so little celebration but
intead so much dissatisfaction with the state of
education? While the question certainly poses
a glaring contradiction, there are a number of
factors that readily appear to offer at least a
partial explanation. These can be summarized
briefly as follows:
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BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
– Notwithstanding the impressive gains, the
goals of equity and equality of opportunity
remain distant for the majority of Caribbean
people. While the barriers of ethnicity, race
and class have been lowered, they had not
been removed. Despite the changing of the
rules of access, poor children of black, east
indian and amerindian origins from rural areas, outer islands and depressed urban communities still have considerable difficulties
gaining access to and maintaining themselves
in those sections of the education system that
offer the greatest prospects of upward social
mobility. The promises of equity and equality,
made in the name of nationalism and nation
building, have not materialized for most of the
people who constitute these segments of the
population, and who have become disappointed by and distrustful of such claims.
– Even though the independence period only
delivered partially upon its promises, the cost
was great. Driven by the imperatives of the
social demand, the State went beyond its own
resources and borrowed heavily anticipating
that the favorable economic circumstances
would continue. By the middle of the 1970s
there were signs that the years of sustained
economic growth had ended. Optimist governments interpreted these signs as temporary
setbacks and borrowed even more, with encouragement from the donor community recycling petro-dollars. Hence, it took another
decade for the hopes of economic recovery to
be translated into meaningful adjustment policies. Accordingly, the price and the pain of
adjustment was much greater.
– The impact on education of structural adjustment policies has been devastating. Four reasons account for the magnitude of their effect.
First, they have raised serious questions about
the cost and affordability of the education
systems.
Second, they have led to retrenchment in the
public provision, leading to the impression
that the State has reneged or at least retreated
from its commitment to equity and equality.
Third, the retrenchment in the public provision threatens many of the gains made during
6
the independence period leading to disillusionment of the part of many who helped
fashion and achieve these gains and a sense of
stagnation on the part of others.
Fourth, in the main Governments have lost
considerable control of developments within
their education systems to the conditionalities
of donor agencies. This has led to the perception of sovereignty being compromised, since
the State now appears as a supplicant to the
agencies.
– By adopting the strategy of seeking to achieve
equity and equality through expanding the
education system rather than restructuring its
organization, many Governments postponed
dealing with many irrational and anachronistic elements of the colonial system. These
aspects were simple make bigger by the expansion. While many of these were barely
tolerable when the momentum of nationalism
was carrying everything with it, and promising
further change, they have become intolerable
where it appears that the systems have settled
into routines likely to remain permanently.
– The developments within the independence
period have brought with them some new
problems for Caribbean education. For example, universal primary and mass or universal
secondary education has brought forward the
problem of children who are illiterate being
promoted from the primary to the secondary
level. The working definition of secondary
education for most Caribbean people, is the
stage of education after mastery of the primary level. Illiterate children in secondary
school represent a fundamental contradiction.
This problem virtually never arose in education system which did not enroll all children at
the primary level, and which rigorously
screened children based on achievement prior
to admission to secondary schools. Students
who had not mastered the basics from the
primary system were simply excluded from
entry to secondary schools. The current inclusion of illiterate children in secondary schools,
instead of their exclusion from schooling which
was previously obtained, has raised new problems concerning the quality and effectiveness
Secondary education in the Caribbean. Achievement and challenges / Errol Miller
of the education being offered. The impression given is that standards have fallen.
– The social, political and economic circumstances of the 1950s and 1960s favored the
interests of the marginal majorities in the subregion and muted the influence and even the
reservations and criticisms of the dominant
minorities. The economic and political circumstances of the last decade are the reverse.
For the first time in the second half of the
twentieth century the dominant minorities have
the opportunity to not only critique the agenda
of the independence period but to alter it. The
devaluation, underestimation and even denigration of the achievements, of the independence period have to some extent been as a
result of the highly critical reactions to recent
educational development from these social
segments. A favorite hobby-horse of criticisms emanating from these sectors has been
the policy of free secondary education.
While the extent to which these six factors
characterize the education discourse in the
different countries of the Caribbean vary, together they form the broad parameters around
which discontent resides about education in
the sub-region. They constitute an important
part of the context of the advocacy for change
and new directions.
The postscript that must be added to this description of the independence period is that
Haiti had achieved its independence over about
150 years before the rest of the sub-region.
Nevertheless, the period of the 1950 to 1985
did see significant advances in Haiti’s education system. These advances however, were
often interrupted, halted and in some instances
even reversed by the tumultuous, traumatic and
tragic outcomes of political upheavals which
continued into the 1990’s. Hopefully with the
resumption of democracy Haiti’s future path
will be more stable and therefore more auspicious for educational development.
Developmental imperatives of the 1990s
The developmental imperatives of the 1990s,
however, go far beyond disaffection with the
outcomes of the reforms of the independence
era. They relate to fundamental global changes
that have overtaken the Caribbean despite the
gains of nation building reforms. Only a mere
listing of these global changes can be undertaken here.
– The collapse of the ideological polarities that
have shaped the world for nearly a hundred
years, at the beginning of the 1990s, has left in
its wake a unipolar world dominated by capitalism and market forces. The burden of resolving all social, ethical and economic problems of the countries of the world have been
put on the shoulders of market forces. This
includes the growing inequities between and
within countries. Faith in the market to resolve
these substantial problems persists despite the
market’s known ethical weakness and its previous failure to resolve these problems in the
last century. The emerging ideological
polarities are those between North and the
South, once it is accepted that within every
Northern country there is some South, and
within every Southern country there is some
North. While for the moment there is greater
intercourse and solidarity within the North,
the potential for the South, in each society, to
explode with the growing inequities cannot be
dismissed.
– At the same time that the ideology of market
forces reign supreme, markets are globalizing
at a rapid. Financial markets are leading the
way, with a few markets becoming important
and dominant centers in different parts of the
world, and with the prospect of emerging
markets joining these centers in the not too
distance future. While economic growth has
been sluggish in many countries, strong
growth, where it exists, is export driven suggesting that competition through trade is the
path to sustained economic well being. In
addition, capital has become transnational
through the ease with which it can cross borders and the speed with which such transactions can take place. In this climate capital has
become sensitive to interest rates and exchange rates differentials between countries
and therefore short term in its focus. The result
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BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
is that even wealthy industrialized countries
are not beyond the speculative manipulations
in capital markets.
– Wealth creation is currently not so much the
result of excess capital or cheap labor, but
through technology and the quality of the
work force. In the information society that is
emerging, where services have replaced the
production of durable goods as the main engine of growth and wealth generation, it is
science and technology on the one hand and
human resource development on the other that
are the critical factors of comparative advantage. Countries which have the advantage in
both of these areas are not about to be generous to those that are disadvantaged, notwithstanding the rhetoric to the contrary. In such
circumstances both tecnological and human
resource development must become endogenous enterprises within countries hoping to
compete in the global market place.
– Like many other populations globally,
Carribean populations are maturing. There
are less children entering schools each year at
age five or six, that leaving the school system
at 15 or 17 years. This is a result of the falling
birth rate and the corresponding decline in the
numbers of live births. Life expectancy in the
sub-region is also increasing and is comparable to many First World countries. It is currently averaging around 70 years for men and
75 years for women. This demographic shift
in the parameters of Caribbean populations
imply that increasing attention must be paid to
the education of adults, since they are already
around and will have to face the dictates of the
rapidly changing economic circumstances dictated by market forces. Persons who missed
out on educational opportunities during childhood and adolescents have to be given the
opportunity to recoup their losses as adults.
This is critical since there will be less and less
young people to meet new demands. Put another way these demographic characteristics
do not permit a strategy of writing off adults
while concentrating education and training on
children.
– The demographic features of the sub-region
8
includes a “baby boomers bulge” but this
generation is younger than the one in the
United States from which the label is derived.
This generation is now between 25 and 30
years old, just about “prime age” in the work
force. This bulge in the age structure of the
populations have stretched countries beyond
their limits in finding gainful employment.
The situation has been aggravated by the
downsizing of government and the laying off
of public sector workers to begin with, and
more recently similar contraction in the private sector. The net result is a significant
increase in “at risk youths” in the generation
just behind the “baby boomers”, although the
latter has its fair share as well. The destructive,
illegal and violent behavior among the “at risk
males” and high incidence of pregnancy and
prostitution among the “at risk females” are
both troubling features of contemporary society that cannot be ignored. While the demographic trends in the population suggest that
this could be a temporary hiatus, both the
technological trends in requiring less people
in the work force and the growing inequities
between segments in the societies, and between countries, suggest the opposite. If not
addressed “at risk youth” could become enduring features of modern society threatening
any other advances made.
– The rapid technological changes have not
only had far-reaching economic implications
but also dramatic social and ethical consequences by aggravating already worrying features of social organization and ambiguity in
value structure of society. Many of the effects
have been indirect. For example, by permitting major changes in the managements structure of corporations may middle managers
have been displaced leading to untoward effects on their families and their role as fathers
and husbands. Also by opening up new channels of communications the process of less
personal intercourse is heightened. While
trends have long existed indicating the breakdown of traditional family structures and of
the increasing contact between people through
electrons machines, information technology
Secondary education in the Caribbean. Achievement and challenges / Errol Miller
has accelerated and enlarged these tendencies. These have raised important questions
concerning the character and content of society, its related institutions and of the individuals that comprise them. The recurrent themes
have centered around values and attitudes and
other ethical issues. Traditional values and
attitudes are being reexamined. While there
is advocacy to revert to tradition, there is
also strong argument for the reconstruction of
value system to meet the contemporary situation.
– Pedagogy in schools is generally perceived to
be outdated in its capacity to address contemporary ethical and behavioral issues, and obsolete in the technology employed in instruction. Technology in the classroom appears
outmoded compared to many homes, most
offices and modern entertainment and out of
step with the learning styles of children comfortable with the information revolution and
excursions into cyberspace. There are major
questions as to how schools should address
the value questions being posed by the “times”
and by the children who bring their contemporary questions to school. Again there is the
escalation in the incidence of children bringing weapons to schools, including guns. The
implications of this practice for discipline in
the school is far-reaching. Moreover, the situation is further compounded by changes in
parental posture with respect to the latitude
schools have in addressing these issues. The
prospect to litigation looms larger than it ever
did before.
– The implication of the above for teachers, has
been enormous. In addition, structural adjustment has done much to diminish their stature
and status. Yet, apart from students, teachers
are the most important part of the education
equation. While information technology may
force some re-definition of teachers’ roles and
relationships; the contemporary social milieu
is challenging their management capability;
and new ethical questions testing their capacity to accommodate and respond to different
world views. At the same time the quality of
the teaching force is a critically important
factor in the quality of education delivered.
While teachers must be held accountable for
their stewardship in the schools, they must
also have the assurance, support and level of
remuneration that will enhance their performance and secure their dedication.
– There has been strong grassroots demand for
educational reform. Factors fueling this demand are: jobless youth and the devastating
effects associated with joblessness; the change
in the nature of work by information technology in which menial and routine jobs have a
more acceptable ambiance than manual work;
the universal nature of the skills and competencies development permitting international
marketing; self employment made possible by
virtual reality and other aspects of the information revolution, and the increasing choice
of business subjects by students. What this
grassroots demand assures is strong participation in the reforms implemented to address the
fundamental changes overtaking all societies,
including the Caribbean.
Reforms and policies in the 1990s
In addressing reform policies of the 1990s it is
necessary to group countries according to language groups, in order to describe the actions
taken.
Haiti
After roller coaster attempts to improve education during the decade of the 1980s, political upheavals virtually brought the process to
a halt by the end of the decade. With the election of a democratic government in February
1991, new measures were taken to resume educational development. However, in September
of that year the democratically elected Government was overthrown by a coup which not
only forced the President into exile, but set the
education development process on hold and
the operation of the education system into decline.
In October 1994 the President was able to
resume office as a result of spectacular means,
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BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
and in November a new government was appointed. The process of education development
has therefore only recently been resumed and
is still in the planning stages since both the
political and bureaucratic machinery are only
now being reconstituted.
The Commonwealth Caribbean
All Commonwealth Caribbean countries have
responded to the imperatives of the 1990s but
not in the same way. The responses can be
classified into two groups: those that have developed comprehensive reform strategies and
plans and those that have adopted a project
driven approach.
The first group is comprised of the Bahamas, Barbados, the OECS countries and Trinidad and Tobago which responded by setting
up National Commissions, Task Forces or
Working Groups to develop comprehensive
approaches. The Bahamas set up a National
Task Force, which worked for almost a year.
The Report submitted has been accepted by
the Government as national policy, and is now
being implemented. Barbados set up a National
Commission, and adopted many of Commission’s recommendations in the National Education Plan to the Year 2000.
Trinidad and Tobago also set up a National
Commission, and has incorporated its recommendations in the Education Plan. The OECS
countries established a Working Group, which
developed the OECS Education Reform Strategy, Foundation for the Future, which has subsequently been adopted by the Ministers of
Education and the Prime Ministers, of the
OECS Authority, as the long-term policy for
education development in the sub-region.
An important point to note about these initiatives is their methodology. They all involved
in-depth and wide-scale consultation within the
societies. These consultations included persons
and groups related to economic activities in
Ministries and statutory bodies within the public sector; large and small enterprises within
the private sector; associations representing
these enterprises and comprising those repre-
10
senting small businesses, manufacturers, commerce, tourism and hospitality industry, commodity groups, financial services, and professional organizations representing various professionals including law, medicine, engineering, journalism, accounting and others. They
also included persons and groups representing
civil society consisting of various religious
bodies, service clubs, citizens associations, political parties including the opposition and governing parties, trade unions, and non-governmental organizations engaged in social, economic and philanthropic ventures. Also included in the consultations were persons and
groups related to schools including principal
and teachers at all levels, teachers’ associations and unions, parents organizations and
parent/teachers associations, students and student associations and boards of governors
where these existed. Finally the consultations
included the political directorate both those in
government and opposition.
In the Bahamas the Task Force visited all
the inhabited “Family Islands” to ensure that
their views were heard and not only those in
the metropolitan centers of New Providence
and Grand Bahamas. In Trinidad and Tobago
not only did the Commission visit both islands
of the twin island Republic, but they also consulted people in depressed urban communities
and in rural areas. In Barbados the Commission held meeting in communities all over the
island and received written and oral submissions. All of these exercises attempted to benefit from the broadest span of views from all
stakeholders, actors and beneficiaries within
the society and educational systems of the
countries concerned. In addition they all reviewed the available literature to benefit from
the latest knowledge in the respective fields
and utilized up-to-date statistics from databases,
on various aspects of national life in the respective countries.
The OECS Working Group deserves special
mention for two reasons. First, eight countries
decided that they would plan their future in
education on a collective sub-regional basis
instead of an individual national basis. This is
Secondary education in the Caribbean. Achievement and challenges / Errol Miller
unusual if not unique in educational planning
because the exercise was not restricted to any
one component or level of education but to the
entire system. The decision was predicated on
the principle that one way of sustaining long
term cooperation within the sub-region is institutionalizing integration through the education system. Second, it was the only exercise
that invited external participation. The chairman, though a Caribbean national, was not a
citizen of an OECS country in contrast to its
members. Also, the Working Group invited
state of the Art Reviews, on several topics,
from Caribbean and Canadian experts. Also at
the Colloquium held by the Working Group,
at which the authors presented their reviews,
respected Caribbean educators and representatives of agencies assisting education in the subregion were invited and participated in the exercise The Working Group, in making its recommendations took account of the views expressed in the consultations, the findings from
the state of the art reviews and the feedback
received at the Colloquium, data on the OECS
countries, feedback from the eight Chief education Officers in the sub-region and its own
judgments.
The second group is comprised of Belize,
Guyana, Jamaica and the Turks and Caicos
Islands. They are following a more project
driven path in which interventions are specifically directed to particular aspects or levels of
the education system. Even in following the
path however the countries involved have all
had fairly wide spread consultation concerning the particular projects. In addition there
has been quite broad based participation in the
various initiatives.
Belize’s reforms are centered around a World
Bank project focused on primary education. In
addition, there has been some private sector
initiatives in places computers in secondary
schools and colleges and linking them by
means of a wide area network. In Guyana and
Jamaica the reform efforts are centered around
Inter-American Development Bank projects at
the primary level and World Bank projects at
the secondary level. In both countries also pri-
vate sector groups have been involved in introducing information technology in secondary and tertiary institutions. In the Turks and
Caicos Islands reforms are based the recommendations of a UNDP sponsored assessment
of primary and secondary education, British
Development Division sponsored interventions
and the efforts to establish a Community College with assistance from the Commonwealth
Fund for Technical Cooperation.
Notwithstanding the different approaches to
reform, the elements and strategies of the different countries share a great deal of similarities and themes. Without going into details the
list of themes is a follows:
– Improving the quality of primary education.
– Modernizing the schools and the classrooms
through wider use of technology.
– Rationalizing secondary education through
curriculum reform, restructuring admission
and promotion procedures and greater careers
guidance.
– Expanding tertiary education, including the
use of the distance education modality, and
linking this level of education more closely to
the labor force demands, especially in the
priority economic sectors namely tourism and
hospitality services, financial services, light
manufacturing, and agro-industry.
– Increasing and improving foreign language
teaching at the secondary and tertiary levels
and linking these to the global market place
and tourism.
– Improving the status, salary and training of
teachers.
– Restructuring the financing of education to
increase cost effectiveness and include cost
recovery, cost sharing and special taxes to
meet educational expenditure.
– Introducing various value oriented projects
and materials to influence character formation
to promote conflict resolution and influence
the development of wholesome and positive
attitudes.
– Improving the Management of schools by
greater involvement of communities and parents and more accountability measures for
schools and teachers.
11
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
– Promoting greater partnership with the State
in the delivery of education.
The Dutch Caribbean
The Dutch Caribbean enjoys a high level of educational development which includes universal
primary and secondary education. It also has
considerable strengths in the teaching and learning of foreign languages. Also, the delivery of
education remains largely the result of a partnership between the State and the Church. The
system of education is also marked by a large
number of different types of schools at the secondary level, based upon the anticipated occupational or further education destinations of students.
Like the rest of the sub-region there was, at
the end of the 1980s, considerable concern
about the quality of education. Reform efforts
were concentrated on the following areas: Curriculum reform; materials development, including textbooks and other teaching materials;
teacher education; educational administration.
Current issues and policies in secondary
education
The policy issues, in secondary education, facing all Caribbean countries are not identical
given the differences among them in educational development, organization and the different postures governments had previously
taken on several issues. At the same time many
of the problems and issues are shared among
many countries. Bearing in mind this caveat
among individual countries, it is possible to
list and comment upon twelve major sets of
issues and challenges facing the sub-region as
a whole in the development of secondary education. Only brief comments will be made in
identifying each set of issues.
Information technology and the modernization
of schools
Strong moves are afoot in almost all countries
to modernize secondary education through the
12
use of information technology. These policies
and programs relate to both administration and
instruction. Management information systems
in Ministries of education, with links to schools,
is part of the planned future of most countries.
So too is the use of computer technology in
classroom instruction creating linkages of
schools locally through networks and with
schools across the world through the Internet.
Parents, communities, the private sector and
schools have joined with governments to
achieve these goals.
Two issues that do not appear to have been
adequately addressed are:
– The technical support infrastructure that needs
to be put in place to sustain the maximal use of
both hardware and software in the achievement of the administrative and instructional
goals.
– The local and sub-regional capacity that needs
to be created to transform existing and new
Caribbean materials into appropriate software
packages that reflect both the milieu and objectives of Caribbean education. Modernizing
the hardware while borrowing the software
from elsewhere may set back recent gains
made in developing appropriate Caribbean
materials for instruction. There are similar
implication for administration.
Articulation with the world of work
Many countries offer secondary education
through a wide variety of types of secondary
schools predicated on a combination of criteria based on ability and anticipated occupational destinations with or without further
study. The usual divide is between general and
technical/vocational education. At the same
time many countries have, in recent years, introduced technical/vocational education and
training for school leavers in relation to sectors of the economy in which they are likely to
find jobs or self employment. These have been
organized through new agencies and institutions which have developed strong links and
working relations with the private sector.
Secondary education in the Caribbean. Achievement and challenges / Errol Miller
The issues facing countries with respect to
general and technical education and articulation with the world of work are:
– The high capital and recurrent costs of technical/vocation education in schools compared
to general education.
– The findings of several tracer studies that
school leavers who pursued technical vocational programs at secondary schools are not
employed at higher rates than those in general
education and are also often employed in
areas outside of the specialization pursued in
school.
– The rapid change in technologies, de-skilling
and retraining that characterizes the workplace
and the projected escalation of this trend.
– The duplication that exists by offering technical and vocation education and training at two
different stages of formal and non-formal education, and greater effectiveness of training
specifically related to job opportunities organized by the non-formal system.
– The constraints on job related technical and
vocational education organized by non-formal education agencies, where the general
education levels of students from the formal
system are weak.
– The increasing demand from the world of
work of students who have a higher level of
general education, are trainable and possessed
of wholesome attitudes and habits.
– The continued difficulties of recruiting and
retaining highly qualified persons in field of
technical and vocational education in circumstances where such persons are in high demand in industry.
Rationalizing the institutional structure
Equity remains a major issue in Caribbean education. No where is this issue more manifest
than with respect to the institutional arrangements for secondary education.
The issues concerning equity and the institutional arrangements by which secondary education is offered are as follows.
– Given that schools within a democratic soci-
ety perform more than an economic classification role, should secondary schooling be differentiated by types of schools or should all
students attend a common type of secondary
school predicated on the bases of social cohesion and shared identity?
– What part should merit or geographical location play, alongside with student and parental
choice, in the allocation of students to particular schools?
– Irrespective of type of schools, or method of
selection or choice of school, what measures
should be put in place to support students from
disadvantaged backgrounds so that they benefit maximally from secondary education?
Contradictions of universal secondary
education
Secondary education only emerged as distinct
level of education in the nineteenth century.
Universal secondary education is largely a
twentieth century phenomenon of the industrialized countries which have not resolved many
of the issues related to this formulation. Secondary education has been defined as a standard of education in preparation for further education or work, a type of education that distinguish the middle classes, and a marker of a
stage of human development. However, secondary education cannot be all three at the
same time. The first emphasizes its cognitive
nature, the second its social stratification connections and the third its affective relationships. Accepting that the goal of keeping all
children in school until age 17 or 18 years is
both desirable and feasible, the problematic
becomes the working definition of secondary
employed for policy purposes and the public’s
understanding and acceptance of that definition.
The question is, on what definition is policy
on secondary education premised? If it is the
cognitive understanding, then can all be reasonably expected to accomplish the expected
standards previously set for a sub-set of students? If it is the second, can all be expected
13
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
to become middle class? If it is the third, and
assuming that all can be assisted to achieve
the developmental tasks of adolescence, what
should be the cognitive and social goals of
secondary education? These questions are still
unresolved in Caribbean education. Accordingly, there is much confusion concerning the
expected outcomes and the means of achieving them. Universal secondary education raises
several critical policy issues related to all three
conceptions.
The standardization of curriculum and
instruction
Governments have been implementing common curriculum policies for both the first cycle and second cycle secondary education, the
different being that the latter is differentiated
by various subject concentrations of areas of
specialization. The standardization of the curriculum also establishes the cognitive outcomes
expected. Accepting this standardization as desirable, for both children in school and adults
out of school, there are several considerations
that must be addressed. Chief among these is
the question, can the standard curriculum and
its cognitive outcomes be achieved within a
standardized instructional framework of five
or six years?
Students develop at different rates. Some are
developmentally precocious, others developmentally standard, still others are developmentally lagged and a small fraction developmentally disabled. Also students are intelligent in different ways. As a result students
reach the end of primary schooling at different
levels of achievement in different areas of accomplishment. This wide variation in ability,
aptitude and achievement is in sharp contrast
to the standardized curriculum structure of secondary education. The question becomes, how
can these two realities be accommodated?
Should it be through transition policies from
primary to secondary, instructional strategy
within secondary or flexibility in the time allotted for the achievements of the stated goals
for both primary and secondary education?
14
The question of quality
Having established mass or universal systems
of secondary education, and reasonable efficiency with respect to through put. Caribbean
Ministries of Education have been grappling
with policy issues related to quality. Some policies have emphasized resources in terms of
teachers, textbooks, teaching materials and nutrition. Others have focused on processes employed in instruction and delivery of education particularly curriculum, tracking or streaming, and the teaching methodologies employed.
Still others have centered on output cognitive
as well as behavioral.
However quality is defined, critical issues
center around its measurement and meaning.
What are reasonable standards of input, context, process or outcome in a mass system of
education, given all the factors operative in
such a system? Should these be measured in
terms of absolute or value added units? Over
what time frame should effects be judged immediate, medium term or long term? How can
compensatory interaction between input, context, process and output be recognized and appropriately acknowledged or rewarded?
While recognizing that almost all of these
questions are technical in nature, that its attempting to solve problems, and that policy is
usually the result of trade offs between competing groups in society, the long term impact
of secondary education rests on the practical
resolution of many of these questions and perspicacious policies based upon such resolution.
The ethical dimension: Values and attitudes
Education is never value neutral. It is usually
most persuasive in transmitting a particular
value orientation when it is also offering socioeconomic consolidation or advancement. It is
least effective where the majority of the participants are marginalized, and the education
system is directed in seeking to have that sector accept the status quo. The former highlights the liberation aspects of education and
its ethical persuasiveness in that context, while
Secondary education in the Caribbean. Achievement and challenges / Errol Miller
the latter spotlights the indoctrinating aspect
of education often employed by dominant
groups in attempting to consolidate their hegemony in society.
Much of the attempts at formulating policy
to address the issue of values and attitudes of
youths, teaching about what is right, has taken
place in contexts in which the rights of youth
to access to meaningful opportunity is being
flagrantly disregarded in reality. Accordingly,
youths are being exhorted to behave correctly,
respect particular conventions and treasure particular outlooks at the same time that the gates
to the most prized sections of secondary education are being effectively closed to them,
joblessness is their future prospect and the
streets their main center of social intercourse.
In other words, in a materialist world, youth
are being implicitly asked to hold to prescribed
value systems without the material reinforcements these values would be most effectively
learned. This inherent and implicit contradiction, in the first attempts to address policy issues related to values and attitudes among the
young, must be recognized and fully addressed
in future policy formulations.
Foreign language learning
Most governments within the Caribbean have
identified foreign language learning as critical
to economic development. The globalization
of markets, and the need to conduct business
across language and cultural divides, and the
importance of tourism to the sub-region have
been the principal stimuli to this policy emphasis. Strong growth in the Pacific rim has
resulted in more persons from that area becoming tourists, while slow sluggish economies in North America and Europe have resulted in a decline of tourists from those traditional centers. There has therefore been growing interest in learning Eastern Languages.
Language learning and teaching is a strength
of the Dutch Caribbean and a weakness in the
English Caribbean. This suggest prospects of
sub-regional cooperation in both policy making and programs in this area.
Financing of secondary education
During the independence era almost all countries in the Caribbean introduced free tuition
policies in secondary education. Countries varied in the free provision of textbook, payment
of examination fees and other school related
expenses. The negative effects of sluggish
economies and structural adjustment on education are well documented. Accordingly, governments have introduced additional measures
to bolster the financing of education. These
have included specific education taxes, cost
recovery measures, community and private sector participation and the reintroduction of student fees under the label of cost sharing.
Different countries have implemented different combinations of these measures, while
others have retained unchanged the previous
policies. Of particular relevance to this paper
are policies that have specifically identified secondary education as at type or level for which
parents should pay for the education of their
children. The general formula is that government pays the personal emolument costs while
parents pay fees to cover the other operational
costs. This constitutes a reversal of previous
policy. The general rationale is that government’s responsibility is to provide primary education and only assist with the financing of the
other levels. However, the reintroduction of
fees at the secondary, and tertiary levels, does
not appear to have had any favorable effect on
the financing of primary education.
Interestingly, in the countries in which student fees have been reintroduced the policy
statements have included the proposition that
no student should be denied secondary education because of their inability to pay fees. However, there are inherent contradictions in the
arrangements by which schools are to charge
fees but students are not be denied education,
that is, government will pay their costs. These
contradictions open the system to abuse by
some parents, bureaucratic humbug in determining payment, and the inability to the school
to collect from those students for whom government has determined not to pay. This policy
15
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
implicitly requires school to bear cash flow
problems related to non-payment and also the
fall-out between the two payment sources.
Notwithstanding the administrative problems,
basic questions that arise from this reversal of
policy are as follows:
– Despite statements to the contrary, will not the
reintroduction of fees disenfranchise children
from the disadvantaged groups in society in
their access to secondary education? There is
empirical evidence which indicate that policies that impose financial burdens on the poor
results in effectively denying their children
access to educational opportunity.
– In circumstances where secondary education
is increasingly part of the requirement of sound
general education required for full participation in an increasingly technological work,
will such policies not hamper the countries
capacity to harness the talent needed to compete in the global economy?
– Is primary and secondary education tuition
services citizens should expect from the State
for both the general and special taxes paid?
– To what extent taxes, cost recovery, cost sharing and other schemes mounted to improve
educational provisions, are servicing internal
and external debt, instead of providing the
education promised by such schemes and paid
for by the taxpayers and public?
– How can Ministries of Education attempt to
ensure that the public provisions for education
are not abused by Ministries of Finance and
other sections of government?
Secondary education for adults: Alternative
modes
Given the fact that mass or universal secondary education is a recent phenomenon in the
Caribbean, over the last 25 years, and given
the fact that even within this period the level
of attainment was modest, secondary education for adults is a growth area in the subregion. The major consumers are those that
have had access to secondary education but
did not achieve to their satisfaction for the requirements of employment or further educa-
16
tion. The main providers are secondary schools,
in urban centers, offering evening programs
on a self financing basis.
In large measure such arrangements tend to
exaggerate the differences in educational opportunities between urban and rural areas.
Adults residing in rural areas must go to urban
centers to continue their education.
Human resource development must be an
important part of government strategy for a
wide variety of reasons that previously discussed. The provision of formal secondary education to those who missed out on the opportunity while they were of school age has to be
an important element of any overall human
resource development policy. Face to face instruction through full-time or part-time programs is only one modality of delivery of such
education. Alternative modes of instruction will
need to be employed.
Distance education offers and alternative
mode of continuing education especially to rural residents and persons employed in urban
centers whose work schedules do not allow
them to participate in schedule classes on a
regular basis. The main draw back to distance
education is the high developmental costs involved in producing the materials. The OCOD/
CIDA Comprehensive Teaching Training
Project, which developed distance teaching instructional materials in four core subjects, has
pioneered a model for the development of such
materials which is now available on a subregional basis. Governments, with grant assistance from donor agencies, may wish to examine the development of similar materials for
the entire range of secondary subjects. Which
could then be mass produced and retailed to
different adult education providers on a cost
recovery basis. This could most effectively be
approached as a substantial sub-regional project
rather than several small national projects.
Access to tertiary education
One of the structural features of Caribbean education, with the exception of one country, is
broad based primary and secondary education
Secondary education in the Caribbean. Achievement and challenges / Errol Miller
capped by limited opportunity to tertiary education. One of the main reasons for the migration of youths from the sub-region is to seek
further education opportunities. Policy measures to expand and improve secondary education must also address what happens to students who successfully achieve the goals and
the standards set. Educational development and
policy making must be integrated across levels if they are to be effective.
While the need to improve primary education, as the foundation for secondary education is often stressed, the point to note that
access to tertiary education, which is the goal
of many students at the secondary level, has a
positive effect on attainment. Limited opportunities to tertiary education weakens the stimulus to achieve at the secondary level. Without
attempting, here, to specify policies for the
expasion of tertiary education it is necessary
simply to underscore the importance of the inter-relationship.
Regional and sub-regional cooperation
Sub-regional cooperation, to varying degrees,
has been a feature of educational development
and policy making over the last 30 years. This
occurs mainly within language groups. Within
each language group, countries have mechanisms for corporative action within the group.
UNESCO/CARNEID, and more recently
CARIFORUM, are mechanisms that have
brought about some measure of cross-language
group cooperation largely on a project basis.
Caribbean examinations Council, represents
programmatic cooperation across language
groups in that students from the Dutch islands
St Marteen, Saba and St Eustacia regularly sit
these examination.
Given the imperatives of NAFTA, regionalization in the emerging global market place and
the newly formed Organization of Caribbean
States, new measures and instruments of subregional, and regional cooperation in education will need to be established as a matter of
policy. An immediate and important area to be
tackled would seem to be the greater understanding of the peoples of the sub-region and
region of the language and cultures of other
groupings. Both the goals and the mechanisms
put in place to achieve them, must be long
term since the barriers of centuries cannot be
lowered much less removed in the short run.
Concluding comment
Secondary education has been a major subject
of educational policy making over the last 40
years. It has also been a significant area of
national and sub-regional achievement. However, there are several old questions that have
remain unresolved at the same time that new
issues are added to the policy agenda. The challenge is to consolidate the gains made in the
recent past, while tackling the imperatives of
the 1990s and beyond.
Thrown into the mix are:
– Technical and technological problems, the
resolution of which educators and professionals are continually engaged.
– Trade offers that politicians are perpetually
forced to make in re-negotiating social agreements as power shifts between competing
groups in the society.
– Comparative analyses that match schools
against homes, workplaces, churches and entertainment on the one hand and on the other
hand, all of these in the Caribbean with other
regions of the world.
– Traditions that either must be conserved,
modified or radically changed.
Only the wise will mix in the right policy
proportions, and only time will tell.
17
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
COORDINATION OF EXTERNAL ASSISTANCE TO
EDUCATION IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN1
Robert McMeekin
The Final Report of the fifth UNESCO regional Meeting of Ministers of Education
for Latin America and the Caribbean (PROMEDLAC V), held in Santiago in June,
1993, includes in its Recommendation the following statement: “International cooperation has an important role to play in the application of this recommendation,
particularly in the areas of financing, technical assistance, research, exchange of
information and integration processes”.2
In this context UNESCO’s Inter-governmental Regional Committee made the
explicit recommendation to: “Promote coordinated activities between the
countries, NGO’s and external assistance agencies, so as to make optimum use of
technical and financial aid from various sources”. The Committee recommended
(paragraph 49) that a report be prepared making recommendations to its next
session.
This report, prepared under the direction of UNESCO’s Regional Office for
Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNESCO/SANTIAGO), seeks to
implement that recommendation.
Study Objectives
The study aims to be of interest to both assistance agencies and countries receiving aid in
* Robert McMeekin: UNESCO’s Consultant.
1 This article is based on a longer study of the same title
published by UNESCO-Santiago, May, 1996. The
study has received support from the World Bank, the
Inter-American Development Bank, and UNICEF. Special thanks are due to Ernesto Schiefelbein and Ana
María Corvalán of UNESCO/Santiago and Donald
Winkler of the World Bank for their encouragement
and active involvement in the study from the design
and data-gathering phases to completion. Thanks are
also due to Sonia Peruzzi and Katrin Boege of
UNESCO/Santiago. Finally, without the cooperation
of correspondents from assistance agencies and countries throughout the region who kindly provided information, comments and suggestions, the report would
not have been possible.
18
their efforts to improve education in Latin
America and the Caribbean (LAC). Specifically, the objectives of the study are: to provide information on the present state of coordination of assistance to education in Latin
America and the Caribbean; to consider experiences both within and outside the region that
cast light on how coordination can be achieved
and what the benefits (and costs) of greater
coordination would be; and to make recommendations based on the information gathered
on how improved coordination might make external assistance to education more effective.
2
UNESCO, Final Report of the Intergovernmental Regional Committee for the Major Project in the Field of
Education in Latin America and the Caribbean, Santiago: June, 1993, p. 34.
Coordination of external assistance to education in Latin America and the Caribbean / Robert McMeekin
Methodology
Letters were sent both to Ministries of Education of all countries in the region and to organizations providing external assistance to
education inquiring about experiences and
views on coordination of assistance; responses
to these are the source of much of the information presented below. A number of additional reports and documents were also reviewed, including several case studies of coordination in specific countries. The present report synthesizes the information received from
ministries of education and aid agencies, plus
information on experiences with coordination
in other regions and comments on earlier drafts
from knowledgeable observers, in order to provide a sense of the pros and cons of efforts to
improve coordination. On the basis of the foregoing, it presents conclusions and recommendations concerning possible measures to improve the effectiveness of efforts to aid education through coordination.
Definition of key terms and concepts
It will be useful to clarify a few key terms at
the outset. “Coordination” is a concept that is
apparently viewed with universal favor, yet experience indicates that there is resistance on
the part of agencies and countries to participate in coordination activities if this implies
relinquishing flexibility of action or expending time and resources. The wording of the
PROMEDLAC V Recommendation is cautious, referring to “international co-operation”
and “coordinated activities between the countries, NGO’s and external assistance agencies,”
and avoiding any implicit assumption that coordination is necessary or even feasible to
achieve in many cases. This study takes into
account the practical difficulties of achieving
coordination.
The Recommendation mentions “international cooperation”, which means an agreement
between two or more parties, including aid
agencies as well as countries, in which the par-
ties both contribute to and benefit from the
cooperative activity. It has a connotation of
voluntary relationship between peers. A correspondent pointed out that in Spanish, the word
“cooperar” means to “operate together”. Coordination of external assistance, on the other
hand, refers to one-way flows of aid from international agencies to recipient countries (although it may be the recipient country that
plays the leading role in coordination.) Coordination has connotations of power and control; in Spanish the word “coordenar” can mean
to work jointly to achieve order (in the sense
of organize or achieve harmony) or to give
orders or to command. It is important to make
clear that the term coordination as used in this
report has the former meaning: to work jointly
to achieve order and promote effectiveness of
efforts to improve education in the region.
Other correspondents drew a distinction between coordination at the level of individual
countries, in which the country itself should
play the leading role, and coordination of region-wide activities, which is an appropriate
arena for international agencies with a crossregional perspective to take the lead.
The areas in which coordination can play a
role are explicitly stated in the Recommendation: “financing, technical assistance, research,
exchange of information and integration processes”.
The phrase “donor coordination” frequently
appears as a form of shorthand for coordination of external assistance, although the largest flows of financial assistance to education
in the region are not donations but rather loans
from multilateral and bilateral agencies. When
this study uses the convenient phrase donor
coordination from time to time, it is in the
broad sense intended by the Recommendation,
including coordinated activities between the
multilateral development lending and technical assistance institutions, the bi-lateral agencies providing loans and grants for education
in the region, NGOs and, perhaps most importantly, the countries themselves.
With regard to coordination between the as-
19
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
sistance agencies themselves, the phrase
“policy coordination” is sometimes used to
mean establishing agreement between the agencies on the policies they recommend that aid
recipients adopt. The purpose of policy coordination is in part to clarify and obtain agreement on recommended policies at the level of
the agencies themselves, and in part to present
a clear and consistent policy framework to the
recipients, thus avoiding confusion and crossed
purposes.
Another term, “aid coordination”, has a specific meaning that must be made clear. This is
a strong form of coordination in which assistance agencies and individual recipient countries come to agreement on the specific content of the sector assistance program (loans,
grants, technical and other assistance) in the
country in question. The aim of aid coordination is to avoid duplication and confusion and
to assure that the country receives the benefit
of all potential assistance to the fullest possible extent and in the most efficient fashion.
Such strong coordination has been achieved in
some countries, but it absolutely requires that
the country itself, and in particular its finance
and planning agencies, play the leadership role.
This study recognizes that aid coordination in
this sense is one –perhaps the most extreme–
form of coordination. It does not assume that
this is the best form of coordination, nor that it
would be feasible or desirable in all countries.
The term “assistance agencies”, refers to the
full range of technical and financial aid institutions, from the largest multilateral banks to
the smallest NGO. “Education” refers to all
forms of education from pre-school through
university, both public and private, formal and
non-formal.
Magnitude of aid to education in Latin
America and the Caribbean
The average flow of external assistance to education in the Latin America and Caribbean region exceeded US$ 1.1 billion dollars per year
in the period 1990-94 (See table 1.) In spite of
20
this very considerable flow of aid, and even
though there are a number of mechanisms that
could provide a degree of coordination, there
is consensus among the respondents to this
study that very little coordination of assistance
actually occurs.
The information on average flows of aid presented in table 1 is based upon the data received from the countries and agencies that
responded to the study’s request for information. While the table covers a large portion of
total aid flows, it is not complete, as discussed
below. The table shows the average external
assistance to education per year, for the years
1990-1994.
By far the largest portion of financial assistance was in the form of loans rather than grants.
The World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank were the largest sources of
loan financing, with the World Bank alone responsible for US$1.132 million in 1994 (table 2).
It is possible to estimate the total flows of
external aid to education even in the absence
of complete information. Taking a sample of
four of the countries for which fairly complete
reports have been received –Costa Rica, Chile,
El Salvador and Uruguay– one can calculate
the share of the two large banks of the total
education aid they received. On this basis the
World Bank and the IDB contributed 74 percent of the total aid in the sample countries.
The data available for all countries indicates
that the two banks contributed a much higher
percentage of the total (US$1.033 million or
92 percent.) If one generalizes the percentage
in the sample countries to the total aid to education the two banks provided in all LAC countries, this would imply that total external assistance averaged US$1.395 million per year
during the period 1990-1994. This could be
considered an upper-limit estimate. The total
aid shown in table 1 is effectively a lowerlimit estimate.
The World Bank was the largest single
contributor to flows of external assistance to
education. Table 2 shows the loans the World
Table 1
ANNUAL AVERAGE OF EDUCATIONAL AID BY COUNTRY AND COOPERATION AGENCY, 1990-1994
(In thousands of dollars)
Agency
World Bank
gentina
CoBolivia
Brazil
Chile
lombia
Costa
Rica Ecuador
El Sal-
Gua-
Hon-
Ja-
vador
temala
duras
maica
Mexico
Nica-
Pa-
Para-
ragua
nama
guay
Peru
Dominican Re-
Uru-
Vene- The Ca-
public
guay
zuela ribbean countries
Other
Total
38 000
8 000
211 900 34 000
22 800
4 600
17 800
–
–
–
6 400
251 400
–
–
–
–
3 000
6 300
29 500
8 200
1 400
643 300
109 590
16 000
20 400 26 773
–
5 600
197
2 880
–
–
5 600
113 938
–
–
14 709
–
5 868
12 670
37 400
17 720
–
389 345
Japan
858
1 744
5 084
902
507
919
188
94
1 064
1 928
152
1 218
104
716
2 355
1 204
801
150
247
86
26
20 346
USAID
–
263
–
527
–
2 510
–
2 818
2 859
2 749
534
–
1 007
–
–
–
571
–
–
1 634
380
15 852
–
227
230
200
1
313
65
92
218
100
119
300
544
100
–
100
57
100
16
1 033
576
300
306
300
193
1 237
–
176
18
200
879
200
–
100
–
215
8
200
3 726
400
–
45
6 956
5 938
IDB
Great Britain
UNESCO
Germany
UNDP
European Union
OAS
–
–
–
4 940
–
–
7
–
0
1
–
–
–
–
–
4
–
946
–
–
2
5 899
1 594
–
–
2
–
–
–
–
1 262
24
189
–
–
120
–
329
9
–
139
–
217
3 885
–
–
–
1 665
–
–
–
–
–
182
–
–
2 000
7
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
3 854
352
88
138
234
248
171
96
93
102
101
123
337
94
174
121
111
–
92
301
607
105
3 687
Spain
–
–
–
3 452
–
12
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
16
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
3 480
Sweden
–
–
–
2 795
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
2 795
UNFPA
–
200
150
–
125
100
120
400
150
150
–
500
100
88
–
–
125
–
175
–
300
2 682
The Netherlands
–
–
–
277
–
574
–
–
–
1 466
–
–
47
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
2 364
World Food
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
2 220
–
–
–
–
100
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
2 320
France
–
–
–
1 988
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
1 988
Canada
–
–
–
1 738
–
3
–
–
–
137
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
1 878
Denmark
UNICEF
–
27
–
–
–
–
1 655
39
–
–
–
110
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
271
–
–
–
–
–
195
–
90
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
60
–
–
–
–
–
–
1 655
792
Luxemburgo
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
500
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
500
Austria
–
–
129
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
129
Belgium/CIFRAN
–
–
–
93
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
93
Israel
–
–
–
68
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
1
–
–
–
69
Italy
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
62
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
62
Norway
–
–
–
36
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
36
Van Leer Foundation
–
–
–
8
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
8
Other agencies
–
–
–
–
–
189
–
288
–
–
–
–
–
56
–
–
–
8
–
–
–
540
150 648
26 724
238 115 81 347
23 998
15 206
19 052
8 893
5 593
8 119 13 875
367 999
5 577
1 442
17 402
2 727
10 475
20 442
67 970
32 373
Total
Source: Robert McMeekin. “Estudio de la coordinación de la asistencia externa a la educación en América Latina y el Caribe”. UNESCO/WB/IDB/UNICEF. Debate document.
Note: Preliminary figures. Explanatory notes to the table may be found in the source.
2 474 1 120 452
21
Coordination of external assistance to education in Latin America and the Caribbean / Robert McMeekin
Ar-
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
Bank financed during the period 1990-1994
by country by individual year; table 3 shows
financial assistance to education by the IDB,
by recipient country, by year. Aid provided by
the Japanese International Cooperation Agency
(JICA) is shown in table 4; the figures for
USAID are shown in table 5.
The external aid shown in the tables is provided, for the most part, by assistance agencies to official government agencies, usually
ministries of education. Missing from this picture is assistance that goes to non-governmental institutions, ranging from foundations and
other education-related NGOs to individual
schools, which is small in absolute magnitude
but may be highly important in some coun-
tries. Small donors that have great flexibility,
and that often make highly efficient use of
limited resources, can play important roles
through demonstration projects, public information campaigns and similar activities outside the area of massive flows of capital.
Aid fluctuates in total; for example, World
Bank loans for education totalled US$1.3 billion in 1994, a sharp increase from US$425 million in 1993 (See table 2), and is expected to be
on the order of US$550 million in 1995. Such
fluctuations are even greater at the level of individual countries, where single large projects have
great impact on the amount of external assistance the country receives in a given year.
As important as external financial assistance
Table 2
WORLD BANK AID BY COUNTRY AND BY CALENDAR YEAR
(In millions of US dollars)
Country
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
Total
Average
Argentina
Barbados
Belize
Bolivia
Brazil
Colombia
Costa Rica
Chile
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
El Salvador
Guatemala
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Jamaica
Mexico
Nicaragua
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Trinidad and Tobago
Uruguay
Venezuela
...
...
...
...
150.0
24.0
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
7.1
...
245.0
...
23.0
170.0
15.0
89.0
...
...
...
12.6
...
...
402.0
...
...
...
...
20.7
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
443.0
...
...
...
...
...
...
58.0
...
7.8
...
...
206.6
90.0
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
32.0
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
89.4
190.0
...
...
40.0
458.0
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
412.0
...
...
...
...
...
31.5
...
190.0
7.8
7.1
40.0
1 059.6
114.0
23.0
170.0
15.0
89.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
12.6
0.0
32.0
1 257.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
20.7
31.5
147.4
38.0
1.6
1.4
8.0
211.9
22.8
4.6
34.0
3.0
17.8
0.0
0.0
0.0
2.5
0.0
6.4
251.4
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
4.1
6.3
29.5
Total
174.0
984.4
501.0
425.8
1 131.5
3 216.7
643.3
Source: Data supplied by the World Bank, analyzed for this study.
22
Coordination of external assistance to education in Latin America and the Caribbean / Robert McMeekin
Table 3
INTER-AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK AID BY COUNTRY AND BY CALENDAR YEAR
(In millions of US dollars)
Country
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
Total
Average
Argentina
Barbados
Belize
Bolivia
Brazil
Caribbean
Costa Rica
Colombia
Chile
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
El Salvador
Guatemala
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Jamaica
Mexico
Nicaragua
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Trinidad and Tobago
Uruguay
Venezuela
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
14.4
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
47.0
...
...
...
...
102.0
...
28.0
...
...
29.3
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
35.0
...
...
11.6
...
...
...
56.0
...
...
133.9
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
28.0
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
95.7
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
1.0
...
...
...
...
...
...
176.7
...
...
52.8
...
...
28.0
140.0
452.3
...
...
80.0
...
21.0
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
393.0
...
...
20.7
...
...
0.4
...
548.0
11.6
0.0
80.0
102.0
77.0
28.0
0.0
133.9
29.3
1.0
14.4
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
28.0
569.7
0.0
0.0
73.5
0.0
0.0
63.4
187.0
109.6
2.3
0.0
16.0
20.4
15.4
5.6
0.0
26.8
5.9
0.2
2.9
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
5.6
113.9
0.0
0.0
14.7
0.0
0.0
12.7
37.4
Total
61.4
194.3
229.5
494.2
967.4
1.946.8
389.4
Source: Data supplied by the Inter-American Development Bank, analyzed for this study.
is, it usually represents only a small fraction
of a country’s total educational spending. Table 6 presents information on aid from one
important agency –the World Bank– that indicates that the Bank’s lending often represented
only one to two percent of the recipient country’s annual public expenditures in education,
although the percentage can be quite substantial in poorer countries (for example, 8.4% in
Nicaragua; 11.8% in Paraguay). It is important to recall, however, that many education
expenditures are fixed –especially items such
as teachers’ pay– and beyond the control of
sector policy-makers. The magnitude of international loans and grants, although fairly small
in relation to total sector budgets, can be very
large in comparison with the discretionary
funds that can be allocated to different uses.
International aid can be the main source of
new funds that can be allocated to launch a
sector reform or make a strategic change.
Existing mechanisms of coordination
When the issue of coordination of external assistance arose at the PROMEDLAC V meeting in 1993, there were comments that a
number of mechanisms already exist that –either actually or potentially– provide means of
coordinating between countries and assistance
agencies. This section reviews some of the most
important of these mechanisms.
23
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
Table 4
JAPANESE JICA AID BY COUNTRY AND CALENDAR YEAR
(In thousands of Yen)a
Country
Argentina
Bolivia
Brazil
Colombia
Costa Rica
Chile
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
El Salvador
Guatemala
Honduras
Jamaica
Mexico
Nicaragua
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Uruguay
Venezuela
Caribbean
Other
Total
Total
period
Average
1990-94
64 990
429 152
365 875
871 734
472 884 2 542 237
40 676
253 614
83 550
459 463
206 116
450 895
247 050
400 508
64 593
94 137
16 819
47 157
203 600
531 897
269 710
963 864
44 210
76 117
245 162
608 939
36 863
52 083
25 158
357 906
159 968 1 177 394
249 248
602 053
22 630
74 780
84 887
123 432
20 168
43 025
3 315
12 732
858.3
1 743.5
5 084.5
507.2
918.9
901.8
801.0
188.3
94.3
1 063.8
1 927.7
152.2
1 217.9
104.2
715.8
2 354.8
1 204.1
149.6
246.9
86.0
25.5
1 381 563 1 527 291 2 174 105 2 130 414 2 903 989 10 117 362
20 346.2
1990
1991
1992
1993
47 242
76 131
255 626
53 869
30 232
114 420
36 989
2 140
86 025
92 430
391 047
50 799
86 246
81 822
15 286
89
19 240
79 484
132 205
4 202
70 061
113 822
126 897
792 568
71 871
72 524
27 073
47 944
3 306
5 194
100 537
194 689
5 478
78 905
3 191
134 319
267 181
100 706
16 583
11 317
117 073
210 401
630 112
36 399
186 911
21 464
53 239
24 009
5 904
103 272
252 244
20 048
87 963
12 029
52 690
277 021
32 386
4 640
2 609
7 259
1 826
45 004
115 016
2 179
126 848
85 962
242 504
119 750
15 850
11 801
59 777
230 720
99 963
15 077
12 818
15 598
5 668
1 923
1994
Source. Data supplied by JICA, analyzed for this study.
Note: “Caribbean” includes: Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent; “Other” includes Cuba and
Guyana.
a In thousands of Yen, except for the right-hand column, which presents the approximate average of grants, by country,
1990-94, in thousands of US dollars.
Meetings of Ministers of Education
One of the potential means of promoting coordination of external assistance is through one
or more of the periodic meetings of ministers
of education for the region. The PROMEDLAC
meetings themselves, whose purpose is to review progress under UNESCO’s Major Project
of Education in the Latin America and Caribbean Region, would offer such an opportunity,
since they are well-attended not only by the
national ministers and key senior officials but
also by representatives of most of the major
assistance agencies. There are, however, reasons why the PROMEDLAC meetings might
24
not be the optimum forum for coordination
activities. The period between the meetings is
too long. Since the meeting of PROMEDLAC
V in June, 1993, it has been agreed that this
series of meetings will be held every three years
rather than every two years as before. The Inter-American Development Bank has not
tended to be an active participant in the
PROMEDLAC meetings. This could presumably be rectified in some manner.
Other periodic meetings of ministers of education or their representatives include those
sponsored by the Organization of American
States and Organization of Ibero-American
States for Education, Science and Culture. Re-
Coordination of external assistance to education in Latin America and the Caribbean / Robert McMeekin
Table 5
U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (USAID) AID BY COUNTRY
AND BY CALENDAR YEAR
(In millions of US dollars)
Country
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
Total
Average
Argentina
Barbados
Belize
Bolivia
Brazil
Caribbean
Costa Rica
Colombia
Chile
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
El Salvador
Guatemala
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Jamaica
Mexico
Nicaragua
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Trinidad and Tobago
Uruguay
Venezuela
...
...
...
625
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
475
...
2.853
2.800
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
570
...
...
...
...
...
659
...
134
1.013
...
2.167
985
43
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
59
...
...
...
...
...
302
...
738
3.722
...
1.360
1.658
432
...
405
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
60
...
...
...
...
...
1.060
...
5.034
6.238
...
916
4.238
1.115
...
1.252
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
99
...
...
...
...
...
836
...
8.184
2.845
...
892
4.062
1.082
...
3.376
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
1.413
...
...
...
...
...
2.857
...
14.090
14.293
...
8.188
13.743
2.672
...
5.033
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
282,6
...
...
...
...
...
571,4
...
2.818,0
2.858,6
...
1.637,6
2.748,6
534,4
...
1.006,6
...
...
...
...
...
...
Total
6.753
5.571
8.676
19.913
21.376
62.289
12.457,8
Source: Data supplied by USAID, analyzed for this study.
gional meetings of ministers offer great advantages as occasions for promoting coordination, since they bring the top political figures
in the sector from each country. On the other
hand, there would difficulties associated with
such a forum. First, these meetings already require that the ministers be away from their
countries for considerable periods; extending
them to include discussions of coordination
might raise difficulties and objections. Second,
these series of meetings generally do not have
continuing executive capacities to follow up
and promote policies and decisions made during the meetings. UNESCO/Santiago serves as
the executing agency for the PROMEDLAC
and MINEDLAC meetings and also operates
several of the regional networks discussed below. Whether it would be in a position to undertake the role of a center or secretariat for
coordination would depend upon the decisions
of UNESCO and the Ministers themselves.
Third, while it would be desirable to involve
the ministers of education in discussions of
policy and coordination on some occasions,
there are tradeoffs associated with having such
high-level participants. One problem is that the
rate of “turnover” among ministers tends to be
very high, and there would be little continuity
in discussions of policy and coordination. For
this reason senior technical officials should
25
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
Table 6
EXTERNAL AID TO EDUCATION IN COUNTRIES OF LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
WORLD BANK AID TO EDUCATION AS PERCENT OF COUNTRIES EDUCATION EXPENDITURE
Country
Average annual WB
human resource lending
(Fiscal years ’91-’97) a)
(Millions of US dollars)
WB education lending
as percentage of country
education expenditure
128.6
1.1
2.4
24.3
285.2
2.9
10.7
28.6
78.1
9.3
22.7
8.0
18.6
9.4
1.8
17.4
7.4
391.0
8.6
10.0
14.3
54.9
8.7
7.4
109.1
2.1
...
...
7.0
1.3
...
2.6
1.7
5.1
5.6
...
...
4.2
...
...
4.1
...
2.1
8.4
1.6
11.8
2.9
4.2
1.3
2.2
Argentina
Barbados
Belize
Bolivia
Brazil
Caribbean
Costa Rica
Colombia
Chile
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
El Salvador
Guatemala
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Jamaica
Mexico
Nicaragua
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Trinidad and Tobago
Uruguay
Venezuela
Source: World Bank, LAC Technical Department Advisory Group, “LAC human resources lending, fiscal years ’91-’97".
Washington, USA. 1994.
probably also be involved in coordination meetings. Finally, for serious discussions of coordination, it would be highly desirable that representatives of the key resource-allocating
agencies –the ministries of finance and planning– also participate in the discussions.
Communications networks and related
mechanisms
Networks of parties interested in common
themes is a means of promoting coordination
in the sense of exchanging information per-
26
taining to the specific themes and promoting
shared views and understanding with regard to
policies, research findings and good practices.
The LAC region has several networks that have
been in operation for a number of years.
Latin American Education Information and
Documentation Network (REDUC): This longestablished network gathers and abstracts education research documents from throughout the
region, maintains these in its information and
documentation base located at the Center for
Education Research and Development (CIDE)
Coordination of external assistance to education in Latin America and the Caribbean / Robert McMeekin
in Santiago, disseminates information about
documents received and responds to requests
for abstracts or complete documents. There are
23 centers throughout the region –based at education research institutions that are usually located in universities– that are linked with
REDUC and with each other by Internet and
other telecommunications means. These centers
add to and make use of REDUC’s information
base. A recent major grant from the InterAmerican Development Bank has served to
strengthen REDUC, especially the ability of
the national centers to communicate information that can guide policies and plans. The
project provides technological hardware and
software, communications links, training and
conduct of a number of sub-regional seminars.
As in the case of most documentation systems, REDUC has had little control over the
flow of material it received, either in terms of
obtaining all or most of the important documents produced, or in terms of evaluating and
qualitatively screening the documents. With the
impetus of the IDB grant, the network has become a more vital and active entity, making
positive efforts to present information to planners and decision makers at times and in forms
that will make it understandable and useful.
Its communication channels offer models of
how communications technology can function
in the education sector, and potential means of
communicating between countries and agencies. Its emphasis, however, is mainly in the
area of education research and its centers are
not particularly well-positioned to link sector
ministries, ministries of finance and planning,
or assistance agencies.
Program of Innovation and Change in the
Training of Educators to Improve the Quality
of Education (PICPEMCE): This network, operating in the area of teacher training and promotion of good teaching practices, is based at
UNESCO/Santiago. It links selected teacher
training institutions and promotes innovation
and dissemination of information on ways of
improving quality of education in general and
teaching practices in particular. Its mode of
operation is largely through seminars, workshops and conferences organized around particular themes relating to its mission. It has
held competitions in substantive areas such as
teaching of reading and writing and has tested
new materials and innovative programs and carried out a variety of dissemination activities.
PICPEMCE obtains co-financing from other
interested assistance agencies to make it possible to carry out some of its activities. It promotes coordination in its area of specialization
and could potentially be even more useful, but
the limitations of its scope mean that it is not
well-suited to be an agent of sector-wide coordination.
Regional Network for Personnel Training
and Support of Literacy and Adult Education
(REDALF): Also based at UNESCO/ Santiago,
REDALF seeks to promote adult education and
literacy activities through training of personnel, support of research, publications and innovations in relevant areas.
REDALF promotes cooperation and communication among private and public organizations that make up the network. These include
public and private organizations specializing
in literacy and adult education at the level of
individual countries. Given the original focus
on literacy of UNESCO’s Major Project in the
Field of Education in the LAC region,
REDALF was one of the earliest of the several networks examined to be established. It
also generates cooperation and co-financing in
its area and, like other networks, is focused on
a single subsector: in this case, the complex of
themes relating to adult education and literacy.
Regional Network for Training, Innovation
and Research in Planning and Administration
of Basic Education and Literacy Programs
(REPLAD): The main thrust of REPLAD’s activities is conducting courses and seminars in
planning and administration of education systems, the aim of which is to train trainers who
can return to their respective organizations and
27
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
disseminate techniques and approaches for improving planning and sector management. An
annual regional workshop on planning and administration, usually held in Santiago, brings
together participants from 15 to 20 member
countries and specialists from international organizations and assistance agencies for training in priority areas. In recent years the main
themes have been project preparation (1991),
new planning tools and techniques applicable
in decentralized systems (1992), and the link
between curriculum and decentralization
(1993). Regional and national seminars and
workshops have served to disseminate information and methodologies and to improve communication between sector planners and managers in countries of the region, as well as to
provide occasions on which staff of assistance
agencies could bring some of their organization’s views on policies and priorities to the
attention of country practitioners. As a result
of REPLAD’s activities, there is now a network of planners and managers throughout the
region who have been trained in and made
familiar with techniques, planning methodologies and policies regarding common themes
such as decentralization.
Regional Information System (SIRI): As directed by the regional ministers of education,
UNESCO/Santiago has collaborated with individual countries to produce a regional compilation of education statistics and indicators.
This has led to publication of the volume, “The
State of Education in Latin America and The
Caribbean, 1980-1989”, the most complete statistical picture of the education sector in LAC
countries published to date.3 A second version,
covering the period 1980-1991, is in preparation as this is written.
In addition to compiling and publishing data
on a consistent and integrated basis, SIRI provides training for national specialists in education statistics, technical assistance to ministries
3
UNESCO, Santiago: 1992.
28
of education on the design and management of
statistics and information systems, and some
processing and analysis of data in connection
with specific studies and programs.
The subject of education statistics is discussed
in greater depth below. In spite of SIRI’s efforts
and activities, educational statistics systems continue to be weak in many countries of the region. The task of improving them goes beyond
SIRI’s mandate or the resources currently available. If it were decided to mount a program to
strengthen national capacities in this area, as one
possible field in which external assistance agencies might provide coordinated assistance, SIRI
and its network of contacts would constitute a
significant first step in this direction.
A sub-regional network for exchange of information on educational innovations is found
in the Caribbean. The Caribbean Network of
Educational Innovation and Development
(CARNEID), financed by UNESCO, is based
in Bridgetown, Barbados.
The networks described above have proved
by their continued healthy operation that they
serve a useful function. They undoubtedly contribute to better flows of information between
countries and practitioners in each of their respective areas of interest. With regard to coordination of external assistance, their seminars
and conferences are occasions for exchanges
of views between countries represented and,
in some cases, representatives of assistance
agencies. Their specific focus on one subsector
(teacher training, adult education) or aspect of
educational development (planning and administration; research; information and statistics)
limits the scope of their actual or potential role
in promoting coordination. If there were a move
to strengthen coordination of external assistance, the networks would naturally be participants and contributors, but would not be positioned to play leading roles.
Other coordination mechanisms
UNICEF and other agencies sponsor an
Interagency Coordinating Committee (ICC)
Coordination of external assistance to education in Latin America and the Caribbean / Robert McMeekin
that is concerned with all sectors involved in
improving children’s welfare, including not
only education but also health, nutrition and
related fields, in the Latin America and Caribbean region. ICC was created following the
World Summit for Children and the Second
American Meeting on Children and Social
Policy to serve as a secretariat for implementation of the Nariño Accord, a regional agreement to implement the recommendations of
the Summit, signed by 28 LAC Countries in
April, 1994. Members include most major
agencies that provide assistance to education,
plus others such as the Pan American Health
Organization, concerned with other aspects of
child welfare. This is an example of coordination across sectoral lines around a special
theme, and oriented toward accomplishing specific goals emerging from the Summit. Its mode
of operation is gathering and exchanging information on progress toward reaching the
goals established through the Nariño Accord
following the Summit. Its activities are supported by UNICEF and other agencies. Its Executive Secretariat rotates among agencies and
is currently UNICEF’s Regional Office for
Latin America and the Caribbean in Bogotá.
The Organization of American States,
through its Department of Education Affairs,
plays a leadership role in three coordination
activities: Drug Prevention Education Program,
Early Childhood/Infant Development Program,
and Science Education Program. The OAS is
also active in regional networks for inter-institutional cooperation on distance education and,
with UNESCO/CRESALC in Caracas, on communications links between universities of the
region.
In the area of vocational and technical education, the International Labor Office operates
a regional Center, CINTERFOR, in Montevideo that provides research and technical assistance and also provides for information exchange between countries about vocational and
technical education programs, policies and successful practices and experiences.
Efforts to establish coordination
There have been efforts to establish different
forms of coordination of external assistance in
the past. These have usually focused on coordination in connection with one aspect of education.
Education Research: In the mid-1980s there
was an effort to establish a worldwide program to support education research. The idea
was for assistance agencies to finance some
education research activities in a coordinated
way, similar to the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research. Initially the
program would have focused upon extending
the International Assessment of Educational
Achievement (IEA) to additional developing
countries throughout the world, with analysis
and interpretation of IEA findings to be carried out by regional and national research institutions. Although there was interest in this
idea on the part of some donor organizations,
it did not win the widespread support that
would have been necessary to make it a success. One commentator stated that opposition
to the idea was based on concern that much of
the scarce funding for education research would
have been drawn into the coordinated program
and devoted to analysis of IEA data, leaving
very little funding available for other purposes.
Project Database: In 1990-91 the U.S.
Agency for International Development initiated efforts to establish a Committee of Donors to Education (CODE) in the LAC region,
the key members of which would have been
USAID, the World Bank and the IDB. Membership would have been extended to include
other multilateral and bilateral aid agencies,
and possibly LAC ministries of education. A
draft proposal document stated that “At present,
there exists no formal mechanism to assure
that donors working in the LAC region collaborate in their efforts to improve educational
systems in the region”. The objectives of such
an organization were to be “to institutionalize
29
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
the exchange of information among donors and
host governments to further educational development in the region”. The idea of a coordinating and information-exchange body was drawn
from the success of the program then called
Donors for African Education, led by the World
Bank and including fifteen other aid agencies,
plus the governments of the sub-Saharan Africa
region (see Chapter 4, Section A. below.)
The central activity initially proposed for
CODE would have been to operate “a database of information on donor activity in all
areas of education in the LAC region, as well
as related research”. Although meetings were
held, CODE was never funded and established.
Education Statistics: More recently there has
been a expression of interest in joint efforts by
donors to improve education statistics in the
countries of the region. Meeting at a Seminar/
Workshop on education indicators held in
Quito in January, 1995, representatives of
UNESCO/Paris, UNESCO/Santiago, the World
Bank and the IDB considered the possibility
of launching a joint effort to improve the quality and timely availability of education statistics and information in countries of the region.
The meeting proposed the preparation of background papers on the role of statistics in improving national policies and programs, a series of regional seminars on the subject and
national seminars in countries with significant
experiences in developing and using statistics
and information in order to disseminate these
experiences. At present no decisions have been
made on this initiative, which could be one
important dimension of coordination, as discussed below.
A related activity was sponsored by
UNESCO/Santiago in June of 1994, when representatives from eight countries and five institutions, plus UNESCO, met in Santiago for
a Workshop on Collection of Information on
Education and Human Development. The meeting focussed upon household surveys of various types and methodologies, which provide
data on education as well as many other social
30
and economic variables. It produced recommendations on how such surveys could be
strengthened to provide valuable sources of
information relevant to education, but also observed that existing surveys constitute rich
sources of already-available data that have not
been analyzed.
Related Coordination Activities: There are
other arrangements for coordination of external assistance that include not only aid to education but also to other social sectors, or all
development aid. An interesting example of
voluntary coordination in the area of early
childhood development (including but not limited to pre-school education) is the a worldwide organization called the Consultative
Group on Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD). ECCD was formed in 1984 as
an international mechanism dedicated to improving the condition of young children at risk.
Its goals are to: promote research and dissemination of information; increase awareness of
problems, needs and strategies; foster networks
among institutions and individuals with common concerns for children at risk, and serve as
a sounding board for new ideas, proposals and
policies concerning child health care, nutrition,
education and related themes. Its core group
includes 19 international organizations backed
by a Secretariat based in Cuernavaca, Mexico
and a group of field representatives in different regions of the world.
The Consultative Group includes a continuously growing network of 1800 institutions and
individuals in 120 countries. The High/Scope
Foundation in Michigan provides administrative
backing. It publishes books and a newsletter.
Through its Secretariat or its participants, ECCD
organizes at least two meetings each year on
key topics relating to childhood development.
Through its advocacy, ECCD has succeeded in
giving issues of child welfare greater priority on
national policy agendas, in increasing knowledge of early childhood issues and enriching the
debate on how to approach them. It is an “independent, informal mechanism ... not a coordi-
Coordination of external assistance to education in Latin America and the Caribbean / Robert McMeekin
nating body” (in the sense of imposing orders of
forcing decisions or participation.) Its Director
attributes its successful function to several key
factors: focus on a timely topic and program
area, a set of clear but evolving agreed-upon
goals, providing concrete and useful knowledge,
active networking including maintaining faceto-face contact, its non-institutional nature, a relatively broad base of financial support (avoiding
“ownership” by a single organization), and administrative and logistical backstopping from the
High/Scope Foundation and UNICEF without
strings attached.
There have been developments within the
United Nations system as a whole to improve
the planning and implementation of development assistance activities within the UN family of organizations, as recommended by the
General Assembly in resolutions 44/211 and
47/199. A key aspect of the efforts proposed
would be the preparation of country programs
of assistance that would integrate the activities
of various donor agencies and government ministries in individual recipient countries. Under
the direction of national authorities, the external aid agencies would prepare Country Strategy Notes that would identify priority sectors
and provide general guidelines for aid. The
aims are to promote coherent programming of
aid by the countries themselves, avoid overlapping of activities and enhance their
complementarity, and improve the predictability of flows of funding. The processes in each
country are to include not only UN agencies
but other external donors as well. The UNDP
Resident Coordinator in each country catalyzes
and supervises the efforts. At this writing Country Strategy Notes have only been prepared
for a limited number of countries.
Cases and examples of coordination in
Latin America and the Caribbean
There have been a number of cases of useful
coordination of external assistance in the LAC
region over a number of years. The sections
that follow present only a few examples and
case studies that have been documented in recent studies and publications. A case study of
coordination of aid to education in Jamaica,
presented at a meeting of the International
Working Group on Education in April, 1993,
found that the Human Resources Development
Program, a high-level coordination effort involving multiple projects and agencies, was
successful in establishing an over-all policy
framework for the projects, in stimulating aid
to education, and in promoting dialogue between representatives of aid agencies and senior officials of government, not only in the
education sector but in other sectors as well. A
case based on experience in Ecuador, prepared
for this study, found that two large international lending agencies developed an informal
but satisfactory means of providing aid to primary education by developing parallel and
complementary projects to serve rural and lowincome urban areas. Finally the chapter considers the Regional Unit for Technical Assistance in the Social Sectors (RUTA Social) operating in Central America and providing coordinated technical assistance in developing
social projects with support from four international aid agencies.
Case Study of Coordination of Aid to
Education in Jamaica
A plenary meeting of the International Working Group on Education (IWGE) held in Nice
in April, 1993, chose as its central topic the
coordination of international cooperation in
education. In order to ground the discussion as
much as possible in practical reality, several
studies were prepared of concrete cases of “donor involvement and co-ordination”. One of
these case studies, prepared by Marlaine
Lockheed and others at the World Bank, concerns Jamaica.4 (Two other IWGE cases will
4
Lockheed, Marlaine, Linda Larach and Theresa Moran,
Donor Coordination for Education: The Case of Jamaica, Education and Social Policy Department, The
World Bank, 1993.
31
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
be discussed in connection with coordination
experiences in other regions.)
The study focuses on coordination in connection with Jamaica’s Human Resources Development Program (HRDP), which was
launched in 1990 with support from the World
Bank and other donors. The HRDP includes
19 projects, of which 7 are in the education
sector. Four assistance organizations participate formally in the HRDP and its coordination processes, while five other agencies providing aid to education do not participate or
are informally involved. The structure of entities taking part in the HRDP is complex and is
more clearly described in the case study itself.
Salient features include: (1) the Secretariat of
the HRDP, which is located in the Planning
Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) outside the Ministry of Education; (2) the Project Implementation Unit (PIU) under the Projects Management Division of the Ministry of Education
and Culture; and (3) project management activities under each of the seven HRDP projects
financed by four donors.
The Government of Jamaica asked the World
Bank to participate in financing the HRDP “and
to take the lead in securing further external
support”.5 The Bank and government representatives met with other potential donors
throughout 1989. Initially eleven bilateral and
multilateral agencies were committed to take
part in the HRDP, although only four external
agencies had formally participated when the
case study was prepared in 1993.
Projects supported under the HRDP give emphasis to the primary education level but affect other levels as well, and include a monitoring and evaluation function and strengthening sector management. Projects finance textbooks and teaching materials, testing and assessment, teacher training, curriculum development, and sector management, planning and
policy; as well as more traditional construction and civil works. There are also compo-
nents that finance nutrition, student loans, public awareness, “recognition grants” for new
primary schools and strengthening the regional
University of the West Indies.
The HRDP acts in three ways to achieve
coordination. First there is an umbrella program (the HRDP itself) that is concerned with
strategies and objectives that transcend sectoral
lines. It is concerned with policy changes, expressed through a “Policy Matrix” that is periodically updated. Second the HRDP organizes
parallel financing of projects, all fitting within
the general policy framework, with support
from multiple assistance agencies. It also provides a degree of coordination with other activities that are outside the HRDP umbrella
program but related to broad strategies for sector strengthening. Finally the HRDP maintains
an information and monitoring system and carries out annual reviews of progress on specific
projects and toward over-all goals. Donors
chose to support programs that fit within the
policy framework or “Matrix”. The case study
finds that this means of coordination has had
two positive impacts: it has provided a general
stimulus to external assistance to education and
an over-all policy framework within which assisted projects fit; and it provides an annual
occasion bringing together all assistance agencies plus senior officials from within and outside the education sector in Jamaica.6 In addition it is credited with stimulating informal
coordination outside the HRDP itself, providing a clearer vision of sector policies and reducing duplication in funding.
The report finds that coordination has tended
to avoid duplication between programs and
projects, maximize resources available for education and promote their efficient use, and increase trust and cooperation among donors and
between the donors and the government. Several characteristics of this case seem important.
5
6
32
Ibid. para. 14.
Ibid. para. 18-19.
Coordination of external assistance to education in Latin America and the Caribbean / Robert McMeekin
– The government took a lead role in establishing the coordination mechanism;
– An organization within the government but
outside the sector ministry (the PIOJ) takes an
active role and is the seat of the Secretariat
responsible for coordination;
– One assistance agency played a lead role in
establishing coordination and assumed a substantial portion of its cost;
– Coordinated activities are limited in scope and
cover only a portion of donor-assisted projects
in the sector;
– Much of the substance of coordination consists of establishing an agreed-upon policy
framework, exchange of information, and ongoing consultation through the annual reviews
of progress (in which all donors, not only the
four officially under the HRDP, and government representatives all participate);
– Assistance agencies participate in those areas
where they have traditionally been involved
or where they have comparative advantage;
– Formal coordination under the HRDP has
stimulated informal coordination.
Case study of coordination of aid to
education in Ecuador
An interesting case of informal coordination
between donor agencies is found in Ecuador.
At the time of a change in political administrations, the government sought to institute an
educational reform that would improve the
quality of basic education in schools in the
poorest regions of the country. In essence the
reform involved a revised version of the “nuclear schools” concept, in which a central
school (called a Centro Educativo Matriz or
CEM) served as the locus for quality improvement in a network or “matrix” of satellite
schools. Drawing lessons from unsuccessful
nuclear schools projects in the past, the reform
was designed to cope with the needs of teachers and the qualitative problems of schools
serving poor areas. It gave both the central
CEMs and individual schools in the networks
a degree of autonomy, including control over
modest budgets to deal with pressing problems of the schools in the networks.7
Both the IDB, which had financed several
education projects in the past, and the World
Bank were in the process of developing new
projects at the time. The UNESCO office in
Quito provided important informal coordination and technical advice during this period of
identification and preparation. In the event, IDB
proceeded first with a project to implement
the reform in poor rural zones of the country
(excluding the eastern provinces in the Amazon basin.) The project was limited to rural
areas due to limits on the amounts IDB was
willing to lend in a single project. Through a
process of informal communication between
government and project-level staff of IDB and
the World Bank, it was agreed that the World
Bank would prepare a parallel project to serve
the needs of poor neighborhoods in and around
urban areas.8 The combined projects thus covered most of the poverty areas in Ecuador, but
were prepared quite separately and implemented according to each Bank’s standards and
procedures.
During the period in which both projects
were meeting conditions of effectiveness,
UNICEF financed the implementation of two
pilot CEMs, which provided useful information regarding how the reform would work in
practice and on costs, as well as visible demonstrations of the different elements in operation. UNICEF also financed one pilot CEM
serving a remote rural area in the Amazonian
province of Napo, where schools in the network are linked by river with the CEM.
A number of factors are of interest in the
Ecuador case. The government –especially a
7
8
For detailed information on the World Bank project,
see Susana Araujo de Solís, “Educación Básica:
Proyecto de Desarollo, Eficiencia y Calidad (EB/
PRODEC), Ecuador”, in Cooperación Internacional y
Desarollo de la Educación. Santiago: Agencia de
Cooperación Internacional, pp. 299-320.
The World Bank project included a separate technical
education component, but this did not entail coordination of assistance.
33
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
team of advisors to the Minister of Education–
was the origin of the reform; the two bank
projects were adapted to the reform. The Minister of Education took a personal interest in
the projects and the reform and provided active political support during their design and
start-up phases. Subsequent ministers have respected and supported the reform and the
projects and there has been unusual continuity
of key individuals during preparation and implementation. Coordination emerged spontaneously and informally in this context. The two
projects are separate but complementary; for
example the IDB project included curricular
reform and pre-service teacher training components while the World Bank project financed
components for a national testing system and
textbook development and provision. The two
large financing organizations maintained communication during preparation and implementation but have, essentially, developed and supervised separate projects. UNESCO and
UNICEF have made opportune contributions
in the form of technical assistance and rapid
financing of small demonstration projects, respectively, during the early stages of the reform. At the national level the directors of the
IDB and World Bank project units maintain
communication and are members of the Ministry of Education’s “Strategic Team” that develops policies and maintains oversight over
the education system, including the two large
projects.
In a paper prepared for this study, Susana
Araujo de Solís, now Director of the World
Bank urban schools project unit, identifies several lessons to be learned. She favors an informal or ad hoc mode of coordination, which
has worked well in the Ecuador case. In her
view, separate organizations should not be created for the purpose of coordination. International organizations should encourage the government to play a leading role in coordination,
especially in terms of policy decisions and
overseeing implementation. Positive political
leadership and support is necessary if the country is to provide coordination. Project plans
34
and agreements should contain conditions relating to coordination. And Avoid situations in
which actions in one project depend on certain
things being accomplished in another; otherwise delays in one can spill over and affect the
other.
Other selected examples
A number of countries have described both
large and small coordinated activities. Some
of the more interesting cases are summarized
below.
Brazil offers an example of coordination at
the level of a single state. Here the IDB and
the World Bank are currently financing complementary activities in Paraná: a World Bank
project for Basic Education Quality Improvement and IDB activities to improve the secondary level. The two institutions initiated discussions to ensure that their respective projects
in Paraná were complementary and they maintain communication about developments in
their respective areas. Studies financed under
the Basic Education project will provide part
of the information needed to prepare the secondary project. This is an example of what
one observer has called “vertical coordination”,
involving external assistance activities at more
than one level of the education pyramid.
Bolivia is engaged in a very large and complex education reform program in which there
has been extensive coordination between a
group of interested donors. These have included
the World Bank, IDB and Dutch, Swiss and
Swedish bilateral assistance agencies.
Chile has its own International Cooperation
Agency (AGCI), based in the Ministry of Planning, that serves to coordinate external assistance in all sectors. One example of coordination relevant to education occurred in connection with a pilot project to improve the quality
of education in the ten percent of schools in
greatest need. Called the “900 Schools” project
or “P-900”, this activity was supported by combined grants from the Swedish International
Development Agency and the Danish aid
Coordination of external assistance to education in Latin America and the Caribbean / Robert McMeekin
agency DANIDA, plus Chile’s own contributions through the Ministry of Education.9 The
two international agencies committed a total
of approximately US$15 million to be disbursed over three years. AGCI coordinate the
international assistance; the implementing unit
was headquartered in the Ministry of Education, which contributed an additional US$6.7
million. The project has been widely cited as
exemplary; evaluation based on scores on Chile’s
SIMCE achievement tests show that the schools
in the project achieved significant gains in test
scores, narrowing the gap between the average
scores for the 900 project schools and the average of publicly-supported schools generally.
Concepts developed and tested during this innovative project were later incorporated in a World
Bank project of much larger scale.
Costa Rica has a Basic Education Quality
Improvement project jointly financed by the
World Bank and the IDB. The large amount of
capital needed for the project led the two organizations to agree upon joint financing. Both
banks participated in joint preparation missions
beginning in October, 1990, and both provided
assistance to the country’s project preparation
team. There is a single Project Coordinating
Unit under the Ministry of Public Education
that works with both banks. The US$61.5 million project is divided by component and by
region so that operations can conform to the
procedures and requirements of each bank. The
World Bank finances teacher training/professional development, evaluation of education
and educational information components, plus
infrastructure investments in three regions of
the country. IDB on its part finances curriculum improvement, institutional strengthening,
and learning resources components, plus infrastructure in three separate regions.
9
For reference, see Marcela Gajardo (ed.), Cooperación
Internacional y Desarrollo de la Educación. Santiago:
AGCI, 1994; and Filp, Johana, The 900 Schools Programme: Improving the Quality of Primary Schools in
Impoverished Areas in Chile. Paris: IIEP, Research
and Studies Series No. 9, 1993.
In the Dominican Republic UNESCO organized a “Round Table of Donors” in the early
1990s. Similarly in Guatemala the UNDP and
UNESCO carried out a coordinated project on
“Curriculum adaptation and improvement” in
which multilateral and bilateral agencies (notably the Dutch) cooperated effectively. There
have been numerous other cases of cooperation and coordination between two or more
agencies in other countries.
The Central American Regional Unit for
Technical Assistance in the Social Sectors
(RUTA Social)
An interesting example of coordination between assistance agencies and countries in one
subregion is found in the RUTA Social of Central America. Here a number of assistance agencies with interests in the social sectors –the
World Bank, Inter-American Development
Bank, UN Development Program and Pan
American Health Organization– jointly finance
the program to assist the seven countries10 in
preparing and managing social sector projects.
While the countries of Central America are
different in many important ways, they have
many problems in common in terms of poverty and shortcomings in their health and education sectors. Many of them also tend for various reasons to have limited capacities to prepare and implement projects. They thus sought
the help of international organizations in the
form of a “Technical Assistance Unit” or group
of specialists and advisors based in the region
who actively guide and supervise sector ministries and organizations in the countries in
project development and management. The
RUTA Social is headquartered in Tegucigalpa,
Honduras and has National Technical Units in
six of the seven member countries.
The objectives of the RUTA Social are to
help the governments to achieve greater effi-
10
Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua,
Costa Rica and Panama.
35
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
ciency in financing and delivering social services and greater equity in the allocation of resources and benefits in the social sectors; and
to channel public expenditures toward poverty
alleviation. The World Bank is the executing
agency of this innovative program, which is
initially designed to last four years. The staff
includes six international specialists in education, public health, nutrition, social sector economics, public sector management and project
preparation, plus national staffs of the Technical Units located in each country, and shortterm consultants.
Substantive operations are carried out by the
National Technical Units (NTUs), which conduct sector analytical work, design and supervise social sector policies, and prepare investment projects for submission to international
financial agencies, including but not limited to
the World Bank and the IDB. The national
units are based in ministries of planning or
finance, which means that their activities are
closely linked with these “resource allocating”
agencies, whose approval is essential for any
social sector project. They also work closely
with the ministries of health, education and
other entities working in the field of poverty
alleviation in each country, and receive technical support and guidance from relevant specialists who circulate throughout the region.
Each NTU maintains an updated inventory of
social sector projects in its country and provides national ministries with general guidelines, technical assistance, manuals concerning project preparation and management and
related support.
The RUTA Social is an important example
of coordination. For several reasons it is a special case of coordination of external assistance:
its focus is wider than the education sector
(encompassing health and poverty-alleviation
as well); its geographical scope is limited to
seven fairly small countries with severe problems of poverty and inadequate provision of
social services; and its activities center on technical assistance in project preparation and management. Still, it represents a joint effort by
36
four major international agencies, which have
made commitments of resources and staff, and
the creation of an operational entity in the region. The countries involved played a critical
role in recognizing a common need and seeking assistance from the donors. The national
units are based in resource-allocating agencies
(an important factor, since these agencies must
approve all proposals for external assistance);
and the focus on technical assistance in project
preparation means that the results of the RUTA
Social’s activities are observable in terms of
effective mobilization of external assistance.
Experiences with coordination in other
regions
Association for Development of African Education (DAE)(Formerly “Donors for African
Education”)
The outstanding example of region-wide coordination of external aid to education is a consortium of assistance agencies and country representatives in Africa, established in 1988 and
originally called “Donors for African Education” (DAE). The occasion for its establishment was a series of consultations about how
to implement the recommendations of a World
Bank policy study, “Education in sub-Saharan
Africa: Policies for Adjustment, Revitalization
and Expansion”. These consultation meetings,
which were attended by donors and representatives of the African countries, were found to
be useful and it was agreed that some on-going consultative group should be formed. The
World Bank assumed leadership for creating
the institution that became the present Association for Development of African Education
(DAE).
The objectives of the DAE are to make the
donors’ contributions to education more effective in terms of providing better education for
all children in the region by:
– providing greater collaboration among donors at the international level and within individual countries;
– assisting ministries of education throughout
Coordination of external assistance to education in Latin America and the Caribbean / Robert McMeekin
the region to profit from each others’ knowledge and experience; and
– to identify and support creative responses to
the problems of education in the African region.
DAE consists of four organizational elements.
The Task Force, which includes all its members, is the highest authority. It meets every
two years in a Biennial Plenary meeting. The
Executive Committee meets annually and includes three representatives of sixteen donor
agencies that make contributions to DAE and
representatives of the African ministers of education (selected by the ministers of education
of all countries). It plans and directs the DAE’s
various activities and approves its budget. The
Host Agency, UNESCO’s International Institute of Educational Planning, houses the Secretariat and provides logistical support for its
operations. The Secretariat has a staff of three;
it manages the on-going programs under the
DAE and provides services to members and to
a number of special-focus Working Groups. It
is the only part of the DAE that has regular
funding. The Secretariat collects and disseminates information on the donors’ activities in
the education sector throughout sub-Saharan
Africa, maintaining a database on project activities and publishing a quarterly Newsletter.
It facilitates dialogue among donor agencies
and between the donors and ministries of education by organizing the plenary meetings of
the Task Force and maintaining liaison with
all the Working Groups. Finally, the Secretariat provides technical and operational support to the Working Groups and promotes the
active participation of senior African education officials and specialists in Working Group
activities.
A system of Working Groups formed around
special themes is one of the most interesting
aspects of the DAE. Themes for Working
Groups are agreed upon at meetings of the
Task Force. Individual donor organizations or
consortia agree to be the host of a Working
Group, to provide partial support for its operations, and to seek additional co-financing. Par-
tial funding for the Working Groups is also
provided from a small budget of core funds
contributed by the donor members. The original Working Groups and the agencies that volunteered to sponsor them are as follows:
1.Working Group on School Examinations
(HEDCO-Ireland)
2.Working Group on Vocational Education and
Training (ILO)
3.Books Sector Working Group (British ODA,
with funding from the EEC, the World Bank,
Canadian CIDA, Swedish SIDA and the Government of Quebec)
4.Higher Education Working Group (World
Bank with Ford Foundation and other funding)
5.Working Group on Education Statistics (Swedish SIDA, in cooperation with UNESCO’s
Division of Statistics)
6.Working Group on the Teaching Profession
(Commonwealth Secretariat)
7.Working Group on Educational Research and
Policy Analysis (IDRC)
8.Working Group on Female Participation
(Rockefeller Foundation)
9.Action Group on the Donors’ Information
System (DAE Secretariat, with Rockefeller
Foundation funding)
10.
Action Group on Exchange of Sector
Studies (UNESCO).
The Working Groups carry out a variety of
activities in connection with their themes, including sponsoring comparative studies among
countries of the region and case studies relating to their themes, holding meetings, seminars and workshops; compiling and disseminating information; creating databases and collections of documentation; conducting training and assistance activities relating to their
themes; and developing regional programs and
projects for donor support.
DAE has evolved from a fairly informal program into an increasingly-formal and permanent set of activities and functions. Its members have evaluated its operations periodically
and found that they are useful and worthy of
continued support. A major evaluation in 1994
37
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
suggested alternative future directions for DAE.
The alternative chosen was “shared partnership”, giving equal status and responsibilities
to African ministers of education and donor
agencies. This in turn led to the change in the
name of the organization and in its original
statutes. There are a number of characteristics
of DAE that merit special consideration:
– The organization emerged from a series of
consultations focusing on a major statement
of policy that one donor organization –the
World Bank– sought to disseminate.
– One of its fundamental principles is that “the
responsibility for educational development
rests with national governments”.
– The organization benefitted initially from the
interest and financial support of one important
assistance agency. Since its inception on a
fairly informal basis, DAE has evolved (and
continues to evolve) with the voluntary support of multiple national and donor agencies.
These participants in DAE indicate by their
continuing support that it is performing a
useful function.
– One of the principal functions DAE serves is
exchange of information. Toward this end its
Secretariat maintains a data base, prepares a
regional compendium of educational statistics, and publishes a newsletter.
– The institution of Working Groups is an interesting offshoot of DAE’s coordination mechanism. Key themes were initially identified by
the Task Force; then special clusters of activities were developed around each of these
themes. Individual donors agreed to take the
lead role in each Working Group, but also
sought co-financing and joint participation by
other donors. Countries are encouraged to
participate in studies and other activities and
their participation is subsidized. Results of
Working Group activities are made available
to all country and donor members of DAE.
– The institution began as a donor-led coordination effort; it has evolved into a partnership in
which both the donors and education ministries in the recipient countries share responsibilities.
38
Case study of coordination in Bangladesh
One of the case studies prepared for the International Working Group on Education (IGWE)
meeting in 1993 examines the history of the
General Education Project (GEP) in Bangladesh, a program designed mainly to improve
primary education.11 Eight external assistance
agencies plus the Government of Bangladesh
jointly financed the four main components of
this US$330 million project.
The World Bank, through it’s International
Development Association (IDA) subsidiary,
had financed two projects in the 1980s to improve access to and quality of primary education in Bangladesh. UNDP, UNICEF and
Swedish SIDA had joined in co-financing these
earlier projects. The projects had achieved their
quantitative objectives in terms of increases in
primary school enrollment, especially enrollment of girls, but had not been fully successful in improving the quality of education offered in the schools. The General Education
Project (1991-95) was designed to give greater
emphasis to improving the quality of primary
education. It also included funding, totaling
approximately five percent of total project cost,
for improving secondary education access, curriculum, textbooks and examinations, and
strengthening sector management.
The agencies that had co-financed the first
two projects –IDA, UNDP, UNICEF and
SIDA– had extensive experience in the sector
in Bangladesh and with collaborative relations
in project financing and implementation. The
concept of coordination between the donors
was thus not new. Given the size and complexity of the GEP, however, government and
the donors agreed that special measures would
be needed to promote coordinated, effective
implementation.
11
Andre Magnen, Donor Coordination in Education: A
case study on Bangladesh. Paris: International Institute for Educational Planning/UNICEF, 1994. Case
study submitted to the IWGE meeting, Nice, April,
1993.
Coordination of external assistance to education in Latin America and the Caribbean / Robert McMeekin
The case study found that the donors had a
strong influence on sector policies in Bangladesh, although there was important substantive dialogue between government authorities
and the donors.12 Relationships between government representatives and the donors were
generally good, although the donors “had the
initiative in project identification, preparation
and appraisal”. The project context was characterized by complex government procedures,
fairly weak implementation capacity and severe financial difficulties that threatened the
availability of the government’s share of project
financing. There was active interest on the part
of the donors in shaping policies and achieving lasting improvements in primary education, especially in its quality, and incorporating innovative components that would contribute to these ends. The project preparation process, including establishing arrangements between the donor agencies that joined in financing the GEP, took over two years and involved
extensive negotiations with the government
over project design, management arrangements
and conditions.
Not surprisingly, given the scale and complexity of the project, there have been problems of implementation. Disbursement of financial assistance has lagged in some cases
and government has had difficulties in meeting its responsibilities for counterpart financing. On the other hand, there has been substantial cooperation among donors and the case
study states that “Separate projects financed
by individual donors would undoubtedly be
much less beneficial to the country”.13
Among the positive factors the case study
cites are the following: The coordinated project
encouraged and enabled government to experiment with innovations and explore possible
fundamental reforms. Combined emphasis by
donors on equity and quality carried sufficient
weight to counterbalance inertia in the sector
12
13
Ibid. pp 15 and 21.
Ibid. p. 35.
and a tendency to focus on physical infrastructure, and to bring about changes (e.g. provision of textbooks to all primary school children). Coordinated supervision and monitoring of the project simplified government’s task
of responding to multiple missions and different pressures from donors. Some additional
inputs to the project emerged from coordinated
activity. Individual donors can participate in
areas of their comparative advantage. In the
background of the GEP project itself, there is
an effective mechanism for coordination of
external assistance in all sectors, in the form
of a Local Consultative Group in which donors and government participate and which is
sponsored by the Ministry of Finance. Some
conflict existed between the ADB, which has
been the largest source of external aid (all sectors) to Bangladesh, and the World Bank/IDA,
which had the position of “Lead Agency” for
the GEP. After a period of some difficulty, the
two agencies have agreed on a formula
whereby IDA will continue to be the lead
agency for assistance to primary education
while ADB will assume leadership in the area
of secondary education. The case study mentions that project monitoring had a positive
effect on success; it also mentions the ability
and good will of key individuals involved in
various aspects of the project.
In spite of a generally good spirit of cooperation, coordination among the donors had
certain shortcomings. The large number of donors, each with somewhat different priorities
and wishes, led to a complex “Christmas tree”
project, with some overlaps and difficulties of
coordination. The highly challenging management needs of the project prompted donors to
establish a strong Project Coordination Unit,
which tends to work against the recognized
aim of strengthening management capacities
of the permanent executing agencies within
government. Coordination is closer among IDA
and the joint co-financiers SIDA and DGIS
than with the parallel co-financiers. Some participants in the coordination process complain
about the “proliferation of mutually un-coor-
39
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
dinated education projects” and argue for formulation of a clearer long-term strategy to be
agreed between the donors and the government. The case study mentions that “differences in objectives and/or procedures among
donors generated major difficulties in the
timely delivery of some inputs”.
The case study concludes that “Donor coordination, both between donors and the government and among donors, has in general worked
reasonably well”. It has done so despite an
extremely large and complex project, and in
the difficult context of Bangladesh’s administrative system. The study finds that the project
has been driven more by the donors than by
the government, which is heavily dependent
on financial aid and has weak managerial capacity. The GEP is a difficult example of coordinated activity, and one that offers a number
of lessons and insights.
Case study of coordination in Benin
Another of the IWGE cases examines a coordinated project to study Benin’s education sector and its needs and provide the analytical
basis for sound policies and investment
projects.14 The government of Benin sought
international financial and technical assistance
to study its education system, which was in a
state of “institutional decay”, and provide guidance on how to reorient and revitalize it. The
project was carried out by UNESCO’s Policy
Analysis Division with financing from UNDP.
Benin had experienced a large but largely
unsuccessful education reform effort begun in
1975. The advent of a new, democratic political administration in 1990/91 provided the occasion for a thorough-going examination of the
education sector, its problems and needs. The
aim of the sector study project was to provide
14
40
Richard Sack, Donor Coordination at the Country
Level: Experience from an “Upstream” Education
Policy Analysis Project. UNESCO contribution to the
meeting of the IWGE in Nice, April, 1993. Paris:
unpublished typescript, 1993.
the government of Benin with a solid policy
framework, within which it could attract substantial external assistance to the education sector. An additional objective was to develop
the country’s own capacities in the areas of
educational planning, monitoring and policy
analysis. The project also involved public consultation processes that were designed to promote national consensus on education issues.
The first phase of the project included a
number of empirical studies and informationgathering activities that produced the information needed to guide policy deliberations. The
findings of this phase formed the basis for a
consultative phase consisting of some 20 seminars and workshops throughout the country attended by policy makers and other stakeholders
and parties interested in the education system.
Representatives of donor agencies participated
in these meetings. The third phase, drawing on
the previous two, involved developing policies for sector reform and action plans that
were based on sound information and broad
public support.
Information from the policy analyses guided
the establishment of an education policy framework. Using data, recommendations and analytical tools (e.g. a financial simulation model)
developed under the project, Benin technicians
from the Ministry of Education and the Ministries of Finance and Planning developed plans
that became the basis for financing from the
World Bank, government of France and
USAID.
Because this “upstream” project began to
produce its findings before the government reformulated its education policy and before the
outlines of external assistance projects were
established, its timely contribution to the information base, policies, strategies and specific plans enabled the government and the
donors to shape a coherent assistance program.
Donors took part at various stages, including
co-financing some of the studies and participating in the consultative process that followed.
Donors carried on dialogue with government
and between themselves before and during the
Coordination of external assistance to education in Latin America and the Caribbean / Robert McMeekin
development of financing programs and
projects.
Some difficulties and frictions arose in the
course of the project. As the policy framework
emerged, donor agencies began to develop their
own education projects. At this point differences between donors in terms of policies, priorities and procedures began to be noted. Some
frictions arose over what constituted an acceptable policy and strategy statement and related action plans. There were disagreements
over whether to attempt to modify the existing
education system or to re-think the role of education in Benin and launch a fundamental reform. As donors moved toward finalizing their
respective projects, “their staff working in the
field became increasingly accountable to a
‘headquarters logic’ rather than a ‘country
logic’”. UNDP’s coordination procedure used
Round Table meetings, which have the advantage of transparency but require a fairly high
degree of prior consensus among donors and
between the donors and the government. The
case study suggests that the Round Tables were
not always successful. The large UNDP/
UNESCO sector study may have foreclosed
some studies that individual donors wanted to
make. And the extensive study and consultation process made it “difficult for any single
donor to claim leadership in coordination of
donor activities”. Nonetheless, the case study
found that, “Presently there is general agreement with Government’s policy framework and
broad donor-government collaboration on the
production of detailed action plans .... Although
it has taken almost a year to produce acceptable action plans, it is expected that the result
will be viable, ‘bankable’ plans to which both
government and donors adhere.15
The case study quotes the project document
of a US$57.5 million USAID primary education project that states:
Without the [UNESCO-UNDP education
policy analysis project, the Beninois] would
not have been able to progress so rapidly in
their education reform program.... Without
the analytical base provided by this project,
the initiation of a major AID assistance program in Benin would not have been possible in
1991.... This effort...enabled Benin to qualify
for [USAID] financing.16
This case focuses on the role of information
and analysis in creating coordination. There
was a degree of collaboration during the process of gathering, analyzing and disseminating
information. But the author distinguishes between ‘coordination’ and what he calls a ‘coordinating effect’. In his view the open availability of a body of information and analysis
provides, in itself, a force for coordination.
“The coordination function was assumed by
information and knowledge, rather than by institutions and individuals”. This is an instance
in which information provides a coordinating
effect at the level of an individual country.
Kenneth King has written about a similar effect at the international level in Aid and Education in the Developing World.17
Coordination from the view of assistance
agencies
Advantages and disadvantages of
coordination
Clarifying and improving programming. From
the point of view of agencies providing external assistance to education, the most important
questions concerning coordination are whether
it is helpful to them in carrying out their mandates, and whether it contributes to the highlevel goal of improving education. On balance
there appears to be consensus that coordination between agencies can make the tasks of
identifying and preparing projects easier and
16
17
15
Ibid. pp. 11-12.
Quoted in Sack, op cit. p. 10.
Kenneth King, Aid and Education in the Developing
World, Burnt Mill, Harlow, England: Longman, 1991.
See especially pp. 12-16.
41
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
more effective. Successful examples include
early-stage efforts to build a base of information and analysis out of which one or more
clear priorities for projects emerge. In some
cases coordination can help assistance agencies support and complement each other, with
each agency taking part in its area of comparative advantage. In other cases agencies simply divide the territory between them –sometimes in an informal manner– and develop and
implement parallel projects (for different levels of education, or in different geographical
regions of a country.)
Experienced observers of agency behavior
comment that there may be resistance to coordination because assistance agencies perceive
this as limiting their opportunities to develop
projects. As a senior agency employee commented, it is not possible for every agency to
finance the top priority project. As pressing
needs for greater access to schooling or for
basic inputs become satisfied through successive projects in a country, it becomes more
difficult to identify good projects, even though
the country’s education system may suffer from
serious shortcomings. In such circumstances it
is increasingly desirable for agencies (and government representatives) to work in coordination to achieve sound country strategies and
sector programs.
Aid agencies are under pressure to improve
the efficiency of their operations and to streamline and speed up the cycle of identifying a
project and readying it for approval. Some
forms of coordination, especially those having
to do with generating a base of empirical and
analytical information and promoting a sound
and coherent policy framework, can speed up
the project processing cycle. Any form of coordination that introduced more steps or reviews in the project cycle would tend to be
resisted.
Providing clear and consistent policy guidance. An area in which coordination could help
is in making clear to recipient country representatives what policies the assistance agen-
42
cies recommend and the rationales for the policies. There is a tendency for representatives of
international assistance organizations, who are
thoroughly versed in research studies and
policy papers, to communicate in a kind of
shorthand and to assume that host-country
counterparts understand and accept what they
mean and why they make their recommendations. (Take the concept of “cost-recovery” for
example.) For various reasons, including high
turnover of counterpart staff and lack of familiarity with key concepts, cultural and historical differences in perspective (for example, regarding fees for university study), or simple intellectual disagreement, this assumption
may be seriously mistaken. A second factor is
that different international institutions may simply have somewhat different positions on policies, which creates confusion. In such situations it would be of benefit to all parties, donors and recipients alike, to make a concerted
effort to clarify policy recommendations and
make clear the reasoning that underlies them.
Building a body of high-quality analytical
work. As the Benin case study shows, generation of information and analysis in a country
may make it easier for agencies to develop
specific assistance projects and to work in coordinated fashion. At the regional level, another area mentioned be respondents is crossregional studies. Some respondents said that it
difficult to finance comparative studies, and
that coordination might make it possible to
have useful cross-regional studies performed.
A caveat here is that agencies may not “trust”
each other’s sector work, or may want to conduct studies on subjects of their own choosing.
Coordinating efforts to accomplish major
tasks. The education needs of some countries
seem overwhelming. Where there is great poverty, severe economic crisis, or where countries are emerging from political or military
turmoil, the needs for assistance can be enormous. Similarly, when governments undertake
Coordination of external assistance to education in Latin America and the Caribbean / Robert McMeekin
major sector reforms, the magnitude and complexity of such efforts calls for coordination of
aid. Where the demands for external aid are
very great, single agencies (even the largest of
them) cannot meet them all, for reasons of limitations on lending programs or concern to avoid
excessively complex projects. Coordination can
make it possible for more than one agency to
participate in meeting the needs. This can be
accomplished through either formal or informal coordination measures.
One caveat emerges with regard to very large
and complex projects: attempts to solve a
number of complicated and difficult problems
at the same through a single, highly ambitious
project involving coordination tend to encounter problems. Cases such as major national reform efforts may seem to call for large-scale
efforts, which imply coordination. Experience
seems to indicate that it is preferable for single agencies or small consortia to pursue their
own projects within a general policy framework, optimally with some degree of information exchange or monitoring and high level
coordination of implementation, rather than to
attempt to link operational activities.
Joint activities between multiple agencies
may raise problems of different standards and
procedures, with regard to prior conditions or
operational requirements regarding procurement and disbursement. Observers caution
against creating such situations. Both agency
and country voices are alike in emphasizing
that coordination of assistance activities should
not lead to increased amounts of bureaucracy.
more difficult to deal with. It would not be
realistic to expect any coordination mechanism
to eliminate problems. On the other hand, if
agencies come to agreement on policies, and
communicate and cooperate with each other in
some spheres, this may tend to create better
understanding and something approaching a
culture of coordination. That in turn might tend
to reduce conflicts.
Reducing conflicts, confusion and duplication. The area of conflict between assistance
agencies is a sensitive one and few informants
are willing to address such problems. It is easy
to say that it would be desirable to reduce confusion and duplication between aid activities,
and it is possible to recommend measures such
as systems of information exchange that would
tend to do so. But direct conflicts, competition, jealousies and “poaching” are realities in
the world of external assistance. These are far
Coordination from the point of view of larger
agencies
Improving the process of supervising and
monitoring projects. Once projects have been
approved, the supervision and monitoring phase
begins, which brings its own needs for a degree of coordination of external assistance. Two
examples will illustrate the point. First, when
there is a change of government (or in some
cases of sector leadership during one political
administration), the newly-arrived political officials and their advisors may be bewildered
by multiple foreign aid projects, each with its
special names and acronyms, requirements and
procedures. On such occasions it would be particularly helpful for representatives of international agencies, together with host-country officials with “institutional memory” about ongoing projects, to brief in-coming officials on
the status of external assistance. A second example is the frequent situation in which a country experiences difficulties in meeting its obligations to provide counterpart funding. Here
meetings between a group of key assistance
agencies, the sector ministry and the finance
and planning ministries could help clarify the
situation, identify priorities and seek solutions.
There are differences between the positions of
large and small agencies with regard to coordination. The larger assistance organizations,
principally the banks, have well-established
procedures and project processing cycles that
offer little flexibility. Their staffs are also under strong pressures to speed the processing
process and to simplify the projects. It is some-
43
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
times difficult for them to respond to special
situations or needs, or to incorporate provisions for innovative or “risky” (because untried) components in their large projects.
Smaller agencies such as smaller bilaterals or
NGOs can react more quickly and flexibly and
can intervene with complementary activities
that benefit both the countries and the large
organizations. These can include studies and
other contributions prior to the design of major aid programs, opportune technical assistance, assistance to the country in preparing all
or some aspect of a project, pilot and demonstration activities, and assistance in connection with research and evaluation.
There is a tendency for the larger agencies
to want to play the leadership role in any coordinated activity. Unless the recipient country
adopts a strong stance in terms of coordinating
aid itself, there may be conflict among agencies over leadership. (The Bangladesh case
mentions such conflict between the World
Bank and the Asian Development Bank.)
Coordination from the point of view of
smaller agencies
Coordinated activities may offer smaller agencies an opportunity to participate in discussions of sector policy frameworks and the formulation of large-scale programs in which they
might otherwise not have a voice. On the other
hand smaller agencies do not want to be dominated by their larger partners. Smaller agencies with tight capital constraints are well suited
for the sort of opportune interventions mentioned in the preceding section. In this way
they can serve important facilitating roles.
Coordinated programs offer each participating organization a chance to operate in its area
of comparative advantage.
Smaller agencies are sometimes better positioned to work with local NGOs; for example,
in financing small-scale innovations or demonstrations that can later provide valuable information for larger-scale projects.
Some bilateral assistance agencies are re-
44
quired to promote “tied aid” or procurement
of some categories of inputs from the donor
country. This requirement may be at odds with
the regulations and procedures of other partners in a coordinated program, unless some
way is found to avoid conflicts between regulations and procedures.
Possible areas for initiating or improving
coordination
The assistance agencies and other knowledgeable observers consulted in the course of the
study suggested various areas in which coordinated activities would be useful.
Promote the Improvement of Education Statistics throughout the Region. Improving the
quality and availability of educational statistics is one area in which coordination could
play an immediate role. As Jeffrey Puryear has
clearly documented, there is are serious deficiencies in the education statistics gathered and
published in most developing countries.18 Problems, in Puryear’s assessment, include lack of
reliability, narrowness and poor design of the
“statistical regime” and general poor quality
of the data. The reasons cited are that education itself is complex and not easy to measure
or evaluate, national capacity to maintain education statistics is often weak or absent, most
countries do not have an “assessment mentality” when it comes to education and actively
avoid establishing testing and evaluation systems for political reasons, and finally, Puryear
says “global leadership is missing”.
Among the factors that Puryear cites as
causes of poor statistical systems are: countries tend not to attach importance or priority
to maintaining good educational statistics, and
there is a failure of “global leadership”. A coordinated effort on the part of donor agencies
18
Puryear, Jeffrey M. “International Education Statistics
and Research”, International Journal of Educational
Development, 15, No. 1, pp. 79-91.
Coordination of external assistance to education in Latin America and the Caribbean / Robert McMeekin
to promote development of sound statistics
functions could be an effective means of overcoming both these problems. There are two
examples of coordinated efforts to improve
educational statistics within geographical regions. First, the OECD has implemented an
International Educational Indicators project
(INES) that could serve as a model, both in
terms of technical design of statistical systems
and education indicators, and in terms of cooperation between countries and international
agencies within the OECD group of countries
(which now includes Mexico.) Second, among
the Working Groups of DAE, there is a Working Group on Educational Statistics, led by the
Swedish International Development Agency
(SIDA) in cooperation with the UNESCO Division of Statistics. DAE publishes a “Statistical Profile of Education in Sub-Saharan Africa” that presents education indicators for all
countries in that region.
In the LAC region, UNESCO’s SIRI information system has made an important contribution to improving educational statistics, but
the need for action to strengthen national educational statistics systems throughout the LAC
region appears to be quite clear and there are
useful precedents and examples of how this
might be carried out.
Help and encourage countries to take the
lead in coordination. From the point of view
of assistance agencies, it is important for recipient countries to assume the leadership role
in coordinating projects and flows of aid into
their own countries. While this is sometimes
difficult to do, many donors feel that is essential in order to achieve true coordination. Externally-imposed coordination may be useful
in the short or even the intermediate term, but
at some point countries need to take charge.
The RUTA Social attempts to help countries
advance in this direction. Some observers
stressed that country-led coordination needs to
originate outside the education sector, at the
level of resource-allocating agencies such as
the ministries of finance or planning, since
these agencies that must eventually become
involved in activities involving loans or major
flows of capital. Among the barriers to development of countries’ own capabilities to coordinate are generally weak administrative capacities, plus the high level of turnover of national staff.
Provide coordinated communications at
times of political transition. One of the perennial problems that assistance agencies face is
high turnover on the part of their country counterparts. Whenever there is a change of political administration –or even a change of ministers within the same administration– not only
the political leader but also the team of senior
advisors and top-level managers changes. The
result is a period of confusion during which
the new team becomes familiar with the sector
and its problems, and with the various external assistance programs that are under way or
in preparatory stages. Misunderstandings can
arise; projects can be delayed or derailed. On
the side of the government, the array of external assistance agencies –each with its policies,
priorities, procedures and terminology– is confusing. It would be useful if organizations providing assistance were to be able to hold joint
meetings or workshops to help the new team
familiarize itself with the policy framework
that has been agreed with their predecessors,
the projects that are underway and any actions
that may be needed in connection with these,
and the programs of assistance that the several
organizations propose for the sector in the future.
Other points
– Provide a data base on external assistance
projects. This has been the subject of one past
effort to achieve a degree of coordination. It is
understood that USAID has a functioning data
base. The critical issues with regard to data
bases are: accessibility to potential users, and
maintaining updated information on projects.
– Coordination of research. There are two ways
45
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
in which coordination could be helpful. First,
assistance agencies find it difficult to conduct
cross-country or cross-regional research, since
their main focus is on assistance to individual
countries. Second, there are times when large
agencies financing major projects do not have
the time or incentive to incorporate provision
for in-depth research in the project except for
evaluation of the project itself or preparation
for subsequent projects. Smaller agencies with
greater orientation to studies and research
could provide valuable assistance by financing well-designed research on some of the
“experimental situations” created by investment projects.
Coordination from the country point of
view
When considering the views of recipient countries it is essential to bear in mind their great
diversity. Large federal countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Argentina may have very different relationships with external assistance
agencies than smaller ones. With the trend toward decentralization, these countries increasingly tend to treat coordination as something
that takes place at the level of the states or
provinces and that the central government
should coordinate. There are also great differences in the degree to which countries recognize the need to take the lead in coordination
themselves, and in their ability to do so. A
country with a strong administrative system
may already have an institution that coordinates external aid across sectors (the Planning
Institute of Jamaica, or Chile’s Agencia de
Cooperación Internacional, for example.) At
the level of the sector, some countries are more
aware of the need to take control of external
assistance to the education sector than others.
Among the country responses the attitudes
expressed toward coordination were generally
quite favorable, although there was great variation between those (relatively few) that think
in terms of playing an active role in coordinating assistance and others that have a much
46
more passive view. Countries that are receiving external assistance from many donors (such
as Bolivia or Paraguay, for example) tend to
feel overwhelmed by the multiplicity of agencies, policy recommendations and projects.
Some larger countries (Argentina, for example) prefer to deal with international agencies
on an individual basis rather than in coordination. In spite of the differences between countries in terms of their size, the amount of initiative they show in establishing their own coordination mechanisms and the complexity of
international assistance activities, there is still
a degree of consensus on some points concerning coordination, as synthesized below.
Improve understanding of external assistance. A number of responses indicated that
coordination of assistance can help countries
obtain a clearer picture of what the assistance
agencies are trying to communicate, what policies and conditions they recommend, and what
their procedures require. This in itself can be
very helpful to education sector administrators, especially those recently come to the sector with a change in political administration.
Counterbalancing this view is a degree of resistance to donors imposing policies on countries; and a concern that if the donors become
more coordinated, they may also become more
dominant.
Avoid confusion and duplication. Many aid
agencies operating independently can create a
degree of confusion and duplication. Some
countries felt that coordination could contribute to greater order and clarity in this respect.
The larger and more self-confident countries
may, on the other hand, feel that a degree of
“competition” between donors is a desirable
thing. There is some naivete about the possibility of negotiating a better deal (e.g. in terms
of interest rates) with donors. The responses
indicate that it would be useful for donors to
communicate more clearly to the recipients
about the characteristics of each agency, their
terms, conditions, procedures and requirements,
the policies they seek to promote, and even
the terminology they use.
Coordination of external assistance to education in Latin America and the Caribbean / Robert McMeekin
Provide better access to information. Many
responses expressed in one way or another a
desire for better access to information: on research findings and best practice, on successful projects and procedures (and coordination
mechanisms) in other countries, on possibilities
for foreign assistance, and so on. The level of
knowledge about sources of information –data
bases, networks, etc.– that are already available
varied between countries. In general, however,
there appears to be a need for better diffusion of
information about sources of information.
Improve communication between countries/
ministries. A number of responses mentioned
the need for better horizontal coordination between ministries of education in different countries and exchange of information about successful programs and projects.
Maximize the amount of external aid. Some
countries felt that greater coordination would
enable them to obtain more external aid. The
case studies and examples of coordination support this. The first donors to begin preparing a
project can help mobilize additional support.
The presence of one respected donor may encourage others to join in. One well-institutionalized case of this is the relationship between
the World Bank and Japanese Trust Fund aid,
which can often be made available on a nonreimbursable basis to help countries meet the
costs of project preparation. In other cases
smaller donors can step in (often with considerable flexibility and speed) and finance activities that complement larger projects (pilot
or demonstration projects, for example.) There
are also examples in which certain donors want
to support parts of projects where they have a
strong ability or “comparative advantage”. This
can include British aid to English-speaking
countries of the Caribbean in the areas of
teacher training and supervision, German and
Scandinavian countries’ assistance for technical and vocational education, and specialized
cases such as Canadian CIDA providing paper
for textbook production in Jamaica. The idea,
as expressed by one donor representative, is
“Don’t leave any money on the table”; take
advantage of all the aid that is available and in
the most effective way.
Other views. A variety of brief but interesting points emerged in the responses and in
communication with knowledgeable observers
at the country level. Involvement of donor
agencies, especially when they bring education sector managers into contact with “resource allocators” in ministries of finance or
planning, can serve to focus more attention on
the sector and help raise its priority level. It
also can improve intra-country dialogue between education and finance entities.
On the other hand one respondent mentioned
that there may be conflict between the resourceallocating ministries and the education sector.
Some respondents were concerned about the
tendency for coordinated administration –
through special project coordination units– to
weaken the administrative capacity of line organizations of the ministry of education. The
case studies also brought out the trade-off between administrative arrangements that facilitate implementation and those that strengthen
longer-term sector management capabilities.
It was pointed out that external assistance in
the area of research and technology, usually
focussing on the university level and on national agencies that finance research, is usually separate from and not coordinated with
aid to other subsectors.
Recommendations
Recommendations emerging from the study include the following:
– It would be desirable to make an effort to
improve coordination among the agencies that
provide aid to education. This should operate
on the basis of “demand”, i.e. on needs and
opportunities to make processes of designing
and delivering aid function more effectively.
– This would include the establishment of a
small secretariat with a mandate to promote
the exchange of relevant information and increase awareness of the issue of coordination.
47
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
– It would also be desirable to establish Working Groups that coordinate activities focusing
on one specific subsector or issue. Agencies
would join and contribute to these Working
Groups on an ad hoc basis.
– Education statistics is a Working Group theme
that received strong support from multiple
agencies.
– Other working groups could be developed on
the basis of priority interests of both donor
organizations and country ministries of education. Some might expand and strengthen the
activities of existing networks or coordinated
activities.
– It would be desirable to raise countries’ awareness of the need to take charge of coordinating
assistance to their own education sectors. A
first step in this direction could be taken at the
MINEDLAC VII meeting.
Meeting of assistance organizations
This report was presented to a meeting of organizations providing external aid to education in the Latin American region in Washington on January 16 - 17, 1996. The meeting
heard a summary presentation of the report,
followed by a discussion of its findings. Several participants expressed interest in the data
on flows of external aid to education in LAC,
indicating that such information had not been
available earlier, and suggesting related information that might be gathered in the future.
Additional information that would be desirable would include breakdowns of total aid
between loans and grants and between different educational subsectors, as well as better
information on trends in flows of aid to the
region.
The meeting heard presentations about models of coordination, including the International
Coordinating Committee that oversees implementation of the Nariño Accord; the Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD); the RUTA Social in Central America, and the Association for Development of African Education (DAE). The meet-
48
ing was also informed about the forthcoming
Program for Revitalization of Education in the
Americas (PERA) sponsored by the U.S.
Agency for International Development and a
project of the Inter-American Dialogue supported by the IDB and the Ford Foundation
that aims to generate public support for educational improvement and reform in six pilot
Latin American countries.
The meeting also heard a presentation about
the theme of improving educational statistics
followed by an in-depth discussion. Participants
discussed ways of strengthening national capacities to generate statistics, and models of
statistical systems that are being put into practice in other regions, such as the OECD Education Indicators.
The representatives of assistance organizations considered possible actions in the future,
taking into account the recommendations of
the study shown in Section B above. They concluded that the highest priority areas for action
are the following:
– coordinated support for activities to improve
education statistics;
– coordination in the area of educational evaluation and achievement testing;
– activities to improve the exchange of information between assistance organizations working in the education sector in Latin America
and the Caribbean, between these organizations and the countries of the region, and
lateral communication between the countries
themselves.
In order to implement these conclusions, it
would be desirable to seek medium- to longterm financing for each. Initially key organizations represented at the meeting have committed themselves to finance assesments of the
needs and “demand” for coordinated action in
each area, the feasibility of taking action, and
the preparation of proposals for financing. It
was also agreed that the conclusions of the
meeting of assistance organizations should be
presented to the Ministers of Education at the
MINEDLAC VII meeting in Kingston, Jamaica, together with the present report.
Devaluation and privatization of education in Latin America / Luis Ratinoff
DEVALUATION AND PRIVATIZATION OF EDUCATION IN
LATIN AMERICA
Luis Ratinoff*
Following a century of rhetoric which has attempted to persuade the population
that education is an essential element of national integration, political
pluralism, the viability of social systems of selection based on merit, and
economic progress, a paradox has ensued. While public discourse praises the
exalted virtues of education, several indicators suggest that contemporary
society tends to underestimate it. This, seemingly occurs both in the public and
private sectors while the phenomenon is not exclusive to underdevelopment,
particularly in the region. Numerous countries resist allocating greater
resources to education, even in the face of the difficulties these restrictions
generate and the deterioration undermining the teaching process. It is almost a
lack of political will rather than a lack of information. Nor can constraint of
public resources be blamed, since the phenomenon is equally present where
funds are in short supply or in relatively large amounts. Furthermore, all
indications point to the fact that private individuals are less inclined to
sacrifice, specially in the strata where educational expense has an effect on the
standard of living of the family. Educational idealism seems to have been
replaced by a considerable amount of calculation and realism. In today’s world,
as opposed to a recent past, the expressed social preferences seem to point
away from education.
This evolution is highly significant, since shifting from a previous situation where the population’s schooling level was to a great extent
contingent on educational supply, to one where
demand reigns supreme with no effective counterweight. However, it must be borne in mind
that this takes place in a scenario where the
circumstances and effects of social and economic policies contribute to deflate the factors
that condition educational demand.
The experience of numerous countries currently undergoing a fiscal crisis and suffering
* Luis Ratinoff. International specialist in education and
IDB’s adviser.
the consequences of economic trends and policies whose short and middle term indications
seem to have a greater influence on the regressiveness of income distribution, rather than on
its progressiveness, suggest that –all things
being equal– when the dynamic factor is educational demand and simultaneously the wellbeing of broad segments of the population does
not seem to improve –maybe even deteriorates
somewhat– a highly cautious reaction should
be expected on the part of the public and private sectors in terms of tying up resources in
middle and long term schemes which offer
dubious returns.
The realities of demand are well known. The
statement that parents are “naturally” predis-
49
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
posed to making any economic sacrifice for
their children’s education is very popular indeed, since it reinforces our own expectations
on parents’ generosity, although is not actually true all of the time. It makes much more
sense to propose that this predisposition, whichever it may be, is present among families within
the boundaries imposed by economic conditions and diminishes as the lower limit is approached. Consequently, where public subsidies are absent, educational demand should
closely mirror income differences, that is, social stratification. Even if a public mobilization campaign in favour of education were to
be launched by low income families, its results would probably translate into pressure for
greater public funding, and would only marginally increase the willingness to stretch the
family budget, even further.
History cautions us to proceed slowly along
these lines. In the 19th century, prolonged
schooling was not a popular measure among
citizens; and, it still is not. High and middle
high social strata were less adamant, since
“having a culture” was a status thing. As for
the rest of the society, schooling began winning adepts to the extent that other more direct
and less costly paths to status and social mobility lost their appeal; only then formal education began to be regarded as an additional
advantage. Lest we forget, among the lower
strata educational demand had to be promoted
through the dissemination of civil ideologies,
religious convictions and, frequently, through
the implementation of compulsory legal minimums of education. Today’s coverage, repetition and dropout indicators reflect both economic restrictions as well as many of these
social preferences.
Clear signs
The power of educational demand is limited
by two conditioning factors. In order for private demand to gradually replace public supply, clear signs and expectations of prosperity
–along with a significant percentage of families enjoying a more comfortable economic
situation– are a must. The social idealism that
50
translates altruistic ideals into action programmes which emphasize the long term objectives pursued, does not seem to flourish in
the absence of economic progress accompanied by some sort of collective feeling of wellbeing. Only then it is reasonable to commit, at
least, marginal resources in initiatives that will
bear fruit in years to come. The opposite is
true when attrition disrupts the continuity between purposes and available means, in which
case human beings opt for two alternative
rationales: those of resources and objectives.
In the short term, the choice is limited to doing whatever the circumstances and resources
command, hopefully optimizing the means but
not overly concerned about the ends; in the
long term, projecting the repercussions between
what is done and what ought to be done will
reveal to what extent today’s problems will
tend to be reproduced in the future.
When people perceive their worlds as a secondary reality that tends to perpetuate their
misfortunes and feel that they, in turn, are impotent to change their fates, the natural tendency is to distort their perspective and adopt
two parallel action planes; expedient solutions
and grand objectives. The former only improve
the administration of things while the latter
infuse meaning to trend-realignment attempts.
Action philosophies that highlight the transcendence of pragmatism in the production and
reproduction of social reality, acknowledge this
gap and stress the value of reconciling practice and ideals through gradual commitments.
Latin American experiences in the field of education illustrate how actions have tended to
progressively detach themselves from the ultimate objectives that justified them. This reflects a severe crisis of educational pragmatism rather than excessive idealism.
The contemporary depreciation of education
is neither whimsical nor isolated. Although
national expressions of this trend vary they all
reflect the incidence of global factors that undermine the notion of education and exacerbate the ambiguities surrounding expectations
about its social function. The transformation
of school systems during this century, the dismemberment of collective commitments and
Devaluation and privatization of education in Latin America / Luis Ratinoff
the prevailing ideas on teaching objectives,
cannot be explained in terms of increased service or diversity, or funding restrictions or, least
of all, as a result of the imperative that called
for optimizing the use of the means. Neither
has this depreciation been the result of deliberate actions. The process was triggered by
overlapping realistic solutions intended to
swiftly checkmate the succession of partial crises borne by schools during that period.1
Those responsible for administering and guiding the evolution of the educational sector, rode
a wave that probably settled them in the exact
opposite shore they had expected to land on.
Based on regional information, the decline
of education’s social value was the product of
the shifting relations between schooling demand and supply. In fact, the synchrony between the loss of power by producers of education and the reduction of relative priority
accorded to these activities is remarkable, as
is the growing monopolization of formal educational opportunities at the hands of their main
social beneficiaries, and the progressive erosion of the non-instrumental contents of education.
These antecedents suggest that, to the extent
that the educational system model –which was
predicated on fulfilling a public service for the
community at large– lost its validity, the emphasis placed on the private demand of
accreditations and instrumental contents of
teaching conceived as a profitable investment
–and therefore linked to the rate of return and,
more importantly, to family and individual perceptions of productivity and potential risk–
seemed to rise sharply.
Supply-side models: Education as a public
space
In the first half of this century, few doubted
that education was a public service, even when
1
For a more detailed analysis, see: L. Ratinoff, “Reforma
de la Educación: Instituciones y Necesidades” in
Pensamiento Educativo, No. 17, Universidad Católica
de Chile.
it happened to be delivered through private
channels. Those who shared this opinion then
–and those who still do– believe that formal
education is not a subsidiary activity but pursues general benefits that are strategic to the
creation and preservation of basic community
commitments, and to ensuring the cultural wellbeing of the population. This being the case,
institutional models are adopted based on the
dynamic nature of the educational supply, thus
facilitating a shared “civic experience”.
This view favours extending schools to encompass society as a whole, toppling cultural
barriers, inequalities, and geographic isolation.
Viewed from the supply-side, public ends are
flexible enough to be adapted to any situation:
– in backward countries, extended education must
be part of a public effort aimed at organizing
diversity as a function of cultural ties that spur
solidarity and reinforce interactive behaviour;
– in the more advanced countries, however,
although these construction tasks are not quite
as important, schools contribute to preserve
and restore community commitments, and
they constitute a useful tool for the continuous
upgrading of competencies.
In both cases, the multiple private benefits
yielded by education are by-products that
strengthen its public function, since supply does
have a bearing both on the self-discipline of
individuals and corporations as expressions of
a shared ethical framework, and on the mild –
but significant– effects stemming from the national accumulation of talent, intelligent and
creativity.
It is important to note that educational systems relying on the dynamic nature of supply
require a well-defined institutional space that
ensures full autonomy, so that the sum total of
elements and resources may be funneled exclusively towards teaching objectives. The creation of this sheltered action field is supported
by a two-fold public rationale: the function
performed is social in nature and warrants top
political priority; and, the success of the learning process demands special conditions. Implicit, is the economic argument regarding the
optimization of scant resources.
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BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
The concept of educational priority impinges
on the reward and punishment educational
authorities dispense in order to shape specific
behavioural patterns, sheltered from distorting
external influences. Education producers
feel that the attainment of instructional
goals is predicated on how effective and widespread the service really is, that is, on the capacity to cover every nook and cranny of
society, and retain and promote students once
in the system. Consequently, the impact schools
have on the community is proportional to
the degree the population has been exposed
to education, who the beneficiaries are, how
much education is delivered, and the efficiency
of pedagogical procedures. Although all of this
is normally expressed quantitatively, the assumption made is that numbers measure the
extent to which the population has absorbed
learning contents. The registered indexes are
barely an approximation which will be borne
out by post-school behavioural patterns; the
actions of a schooled population should faithfully reflect the cultural values and instruments
delivered through formal education. From this
standpoint, schools generate two effects which
through mutual reinforcement, magnify education’s successful outcomes: first, over students and, indirectly, over previous generations
who having benefitted from education, converge
to multiply the social effect of schooling.
The following implications emerge from the
internal and external provisos of this institutional paradigm:
The universality of “School Merit”
School merit constitutes the organizing principle of any model geared towards disseminating education.2 While its chief purpose is to
make education available to all society, the
success parameters of the system must first be
defined. Although the contents of school merit
vary according to the particular circumstances
2
52
In the practice of demand-inspired schooling models,
school merit is defined as a function of quality standards.
the country is undergoing, and as a function of
historic evolution, there are two variables that
unify this diversity: the rationale imposed by
the learning process, and the aspirations to universality inherent in the concept. In fact, school
merit is the one institutional criterion that reflects the ethical imperative that calls for disseminating education regardless of the social
and economic differences that prevail outside
the school.
Education as a supply concept, presupposes
that learning ideals are equally valid for the
community as a whole and for each of its members. School merit is first supposed to place
everybody on an equal footing based on universal criteria, and then differentiate according to individual achievement. The integrating
metaphor presupposes that the individuals conforming the educational system belong to various races and social classes, so that the role of
the school is to turn the original heterogeneity
of the incoming contingents into a homogeneity of civic values and cultural opportunities,
limiting the options but optimizing inclusiveness. The pedagogical process demands that
schools provide a suitable environment for a
life experience that fosters learning through
work, rewards and games, ranking and sorting
out students as a strategy designed to implant
schooling values.
If these objectives are to be met, the system
should be able to differentiate students solely
on the basis of performance and learning level.
Viewed from the supply-side, the internal atmosphere of teaching institutions, and the pedagogical procedures and strategies, aim to partially or completely counter the adverse effects of external inequalities responsible for
poor motivation and lackluster academic performance.
In actual practice, the pressure build-up generated by social inequalities and school programmes gives rise to problems that teaching
systems confront with realistic vigour; however, a side effect is the rigidity of internal
transference and promotion mechanisms. The
wider the gap between social and schooling
stratification, the higher the chance that the
problem-solving measures adopted may result
Devaluation and privatization of education in Latin America / Luis Ratinoff
in a reduction of the universalist aspirations of
educational supply.
Progressiveness of the supply
External reality conditions the expansion of
education. From the implementation perspective, extending supply into settings characterized by heterogeneous values and cultures, can
only be accomplished through historically progressive sequences; therefore, school’s external successes are measured as stages within a
process, as “schooling”. Schooling, elicits values and mechanisms that buttress the continuity of a process devised to extend educational
supply onto the coming generation. According
to a social theory, teaching supposedly affects
individual objectives, conditions behaviour organization and the codes and instruments that
determine successful human interactions, in
such a way that schooled populations make
other transformations possible that, in addition
to increasing well-being and the quality of life,
heighten educational demand. From this perspective, the progressive influence of schools
in the community, is the product of lineal processes which once launched become self-nourishing.
Actually, the lineal nature of schooling gives
rise to discontinuity, since it penetrates deeper
where resistance is weaker. Feedback contributes to the monopolization of the benefits of
education by culturally privileged groups, at
the expense of the excluded segments. The balance between the expansion and intensity of
the influence education has in the community,
constitutes an expression of the social diversity the very schooling process begets. Unless
strategies designed to neutralize this discriminating effect are implemented, the process may
become a vicious cycle tending to concentrate
education, rather than disseminate it.
The tridimensional nature of the educational
field
If the plan is to expand knowledge into culturally heterogenous settings, schools should be
sufficiently open-ended to accept students from
milieus where different values and aspirations
prevail. This inclusiveness has repercussions
in the sector’s organization which is compelled
to reproduce external elements of social differentiation in its structure. The different types
of education, the special cycles, the geographical distribution and curricular emphasis, clearly
contribute to recruiting in heterogenous settings, but they also introduce a complexity factor into the system that trammels its internal
fluidity.
To keep internal complexities from mirroring external inequalities that hinder the attainment of education’s universalist objectives, the
court must be chalked according to norms and
criteria that restore the lost homogeneity. This
is usually accomplished through a definition
of equivalences and procedures that facilitate
students’ horizontal transfers whatever the point
of entry into the system happens to be. If differences can be made into equivalences, the
possibility exists, at least theoretically, of creating an operational homogeneity that helps
dampen the effects of social inequalities when
implementing school merit.
Lastly, attainment of educational objectives
is contingent on the length of the term, the
intensity of educational exposure, and on the
insertion of learning opportunities. Schools
must be able to retain students for prolonged
periods of time and the systems, in turn, should
be prepared to reward efforts made by promoting to higher levels of instruction. This vertical dimension of the educational field is essential in fostering the skills of groups with
limited access to the benefits of the service.
The socializing influence of schools in every
stratum and group is measured against the capacity of the teaching environment to bring
life to the values of the educational process
through a succession of promotions and rewards.
These three dimensions of educational space,
namely, the institutional flexibility that allows
extending schools, system integration mechanisms which facilitate transferring between
vocational alternatives, and promotion as a reward to school merit, create a field of strength
and feasibilities whose success or failure will
depend on how the norms are applied:
53
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
– in order that diversity becomes a force of
attraction rather than discrimination, alternatives must contain a considerable proportion
of homogenous teaching contents; the quality
of teaching imparted, must also be comparable. Otherwise, educational spaces will
propend to reproduce external segregation
criteria. By and large, low and middle level
systems organized in complex specialty networks, are less likely to overcome the barriers
originating from institutional diversity.
– To the extent that transference among the
different disciplines remains low, the point of
entry into the system will determine the fate of
the student, and formal equivalences will mean
little; when this happens, there are two possible alternatives: either cut back on the
specialties or add higher levels so that promotion may occur while maintaining the homogeneity of upper mobility expectations, and
“equivalent” levels of advancement.
– Where dropout and repetition rates are high,
the student population tends to splinter into
high promotion sectors, facing broad middle
and low promotion groups. This radical disintegration of the educational space reflects the
influence of extra-curricular factors on merit
reward distribution.
The integrity of the educational field, will determine the universalization of teaching benefits among the recruited groups.
Limits to Educational Supply: The
regional experience
The evolution of supply-based educational systems in Latin America, provides some hints as
to the creation and subsequent disintegration
of educational spaces, and the problems massive education pose.
The construction phase of educational space
Regional data suggest that the construction cycle of an integrated educational space begins
when the school starts to expand within the
community, incorporating new social groups
with the ability to remain in the system for
significant periods of time.
54
This positive balance is reflected in appreciable reductions of repetition and dropout rates;
a situation which normally results when the
retention and promotion capacity of the school
associated with external economic and social
enhancement processes, goes beyond those sectors for whom formal accreditations represent
status corroboration. Two aspects that may help
understand the nature of the social factors that
enter into the integration of educational space,
are shown in these scenarios. First, continuity
permits stratification based on school merit,
over and above the original cultural levels of
newly incorporated groups. Second, during this
stage the qualifying effect is very likely equal
to or greater than the legitimizing effect of
education. Although more often than not it is
extremely difficult to ascertain to what extent
are formal qualifications translatable into status acquisition or lend legitimacy to positions
arrived at through the convergence of ancillary factors, chances are that in an environment where upward mobility elements predominate, accreditations may have a greater
weight.
It is interesting to note that school officials
now entering retirement age and who, since
the forties, have been actors of Latin America’s historical evolution, are the product of an
initial attempt to introduce schools’ universalist
values into the community through an expanded education supply. Evidently, these generations were a significant factor in the political opening processes, and represented a considerable broadening of the recruiting base of
society’s middle and higher echelons.
The above, points to some typical features
of these early integration phases of the educational space. Although the diversity of groups
recruited by schools has increased, a reasonable degree of cultural homogeneity may still
be preserved. Education is a powerful homogenizing factor. School graduates tend to think
of themselves as school products.
The disintegration phase of educational space
Regional experience identifies a second stage
of the process characterized by less conver-
Devaluation and privatization of education in Latin America / Luis Ratinoff
gence factors and more conflict and dissonance.
While at the previous phase there was every
indication that economic growth harboured an
abundance of well-remunerated occupations
and ensured the provision of funds allocated
to education, extended education is not accomplished at the expense of having to absorb an
excessive cultural diversity; during the new
phase, however, multiple accreditations have a
“watering down” effect on initial monopolistic
advantages and, as a result, groups with high
levels of expectation respond by prolonging
the school period considerably, thus obtaining
the sort of accreditation that could enhance
their competitivity. The new social frontiers of
schools, in turn, imply a growing cultural diversity.
The fact that under these circumstances upward mobility processes associated with education slow down, and the insertion of schools
in heterogeneous cultural milieus raise problems which the system is not prepared to handle, adds to the divergence of interests. Mobile social sectors tend to monopolize the educational supply in order to obtain better qualifications at the expense of funds needed to
expand schooling. Under these circumstances
supply turns to two not always compatible objectives; meet the increasing demand of upward moving sectors and, simultaneously, create a community of citizens that encompasses
all of society. To the extent the expansion of
schooling culture towards new groups negatively affects the expectations of mobile sectors, educational space may be severely fragmented.
Since the mid-sixties, the repercussions of
this fragmentation conditioned the evolution
of educational supply in Latin America. The
various regional experiences seem to coincide
while they shed a light on the implications
that specializing part of the educational system to satisfy the demand of mobile groups
may have. For a while the social supply of
relatively well paid posts tended to be saturated by the supply of formal qualifications. In
time, the same schooling naturally yielded less
satisfactory results, and consequently the bonds
between education and mobility became weaker
at the middle and higher levels. Conversely, in
the lower strata, where possibilities were practically null, basic education continued to have
a net positive effect and, if nothing else, ensured a higher preference in the labour market.
Massive instruction made it increasingly
harder to juggle this two priorities, and educational systems prepared to enter a third growth
stage dominated by the demands of mobile
groups. The shift in priorities and practices this
new adjustment required shook the sector’s
organization. In fact, schools were operationally adapted to cater to two types of clients;
one consisting of groups interested in climbing to the higher grades as a mechanism for
securing accreditations that legitimized a better status; and the other, considerably more
numerous, a low mobility sector with high repetition and dropout rates. Mention should be
made of some of the structural problems exhibited by this institutional scheme. Among
the immobile sector, the slow and painstaking
elevation of middle education was finally accomplished but not without tremendous quality losses, first in primary and then in secondary grades. In turn, those who optimized their
educational mobility, did so at the expense of
a great mass that tended to repeat and drop out
at different levels.
Throughout these three phases, the function
of educational supply evidently changed. Priorities shifted from the provision of cultural
values to new groups, to the accreditation of
individuals. To the extent that opportunities
trailed aspirations, accreditations served to legitimize the status rather than to facilitate mobility. Schooling that initially had contributed
to the creation of a relatively homogeneous
platform tended to incorporate the cultural diversities present in stratification. Finally, the
schooling project that had originally taken the
form of a strategy with national objectives,
became a matter of sectoral efficiency.
This evolution suggests that supply faded out
even before it attempted to clear some of the
barriers of social inequality. Confronted with
cultural heterogeneity, the various systems decided to reconcile their operation with exter55
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
nal segregation criteria. While the supply of
promotion opportunities were being filled by
status seeking groups, schools focused chiefly
on the needs of these sectors. In this third
phase, social differences nourished educational
discriminations and they, in turn, tended to legitimize said differences.
The crisis of idealism and conservative
proposals
The practice of systems based on the social
function of supply suggest reflecting upon the
conditions that would make possible extending education into various contexts. Where the
possibility existed of expanding schools’ influence in a sustained fashion and over long
periods of time and, in turn, social inequalities
were seen to diminish, the natural consequence
was seemingly the consolidation of a protected
and reasonably integrated institutional space.
Conversely, where social evolution either failed
to support the educational action or curtail inequalities, schools did not extend far.
That the relationship between the complexities of the challenge and the institutional capacity constitutes a critical aspect of the success of the schooling process, is a logical conclusion. Available information confirms the significance of both factors, although as a general rule the better known symptoms are manifested as capacity shortages. In this respect, it
is good to remember that public awareness of
the tasks’ complexity stems from the very environments created by the swift massiveness
of education; that is, the problem is perceived
in terms of the precariousness of the service
rendered, and not so much in terms of the relationship between assigned resources and the
volume and complexity of the gaps encountered. This is the natural reaction to quick expansion cycles that having reached their limits, unleash conflicts of interest that out-rank
the attainment of objectives, while sectoral efforts are used up in an attempt to solve the
internal crisis.
In Latin America, the universalization of education brought into the limelight the limited
capacity issue, both in reference to the eco56
nomic dimension and to the efficacy of institutional and pedagogical practices. As a result,
attention focused away from schooling objectives and zoomed in on the open conflict involving the assigned sums and, specially, the
use to be given to these resources. Public perception defined the conflict as a cause and effect relationship given the seizure and control
of resources, and took little heed of the deteriorating system and its incapacity to fulfill
objectives. All indications are that Latin American societies interpreted the crisis as a strictly
sectoral issue, not as the floundering of a political project bent on extending the universalist
influence of schools throughout the entire community. Under this perspective, problems were
seen as a struggle between the various sectoral
interests and the strictly technical ends of the
pedagogical processes. Evidently, the image
of a sector turned against itself was instrumental in discouraging society’s commitment to
those particular educational practices.
However, it should be pointed out that, social disenchantment with the universalist ends
of educational supply was not restricted exclusively to the region. By the seventies, public
disaffection with the operation and outcomes
of formal education, had increased markedly.
Criticism was more vitriolic in countries where
school systems had yet to form an integrated,
consolidated, and protected institutional space.
Behind a facade that ritually professed the value
of education, protest demonstrations addressed
issues such as:
– Popular disenchantment with the usefulness
of schooling as a social ladder. Other groups
lashed out at the lack of means to acquire a
modicum of meaningful education that actually made the difference.
– Generalized political resistance to commit
additional public resources to social programmes which envisioned long term
universalist objectives.
These reactions probably reflected problems
raised by the economic and social reform of
certain industrialist countries. By the mid-seventies, four parallel trends were conspicuous:
– Social mobility aspirations seemed to exceed
the supply of solid opportunities. The eco-
Devaluation and privatization of education in Latin America / Luis Ratinoff
nomic bases that had underpinned the mobility culture characteristic of the post-war era,
had floundered. The prevailing mood was one
of rejection of established values and adoption
of alternative life-styles.
– In fact, unemployment was on the rise, labour
expectations appeared unstable, and a progressive but significant stagnation of real wages
for low skilled workers was evident. Concurrently, the wages for better qualified workers
appeared to increase in a sustainable fashion.
– The threat of inflation loomed in the horizon
contributing to reinforce public awareness in
the sense that stability should be the at the core
of economic policy, so that long term progress
was predicated on maintaining a succession of
short term balances. This meant getting rid of
the concept of dynamic balance which the
previous social optimism had relied on.
– In an environment characterized by declining
relative opportunities, where short term logic
prevailed, aspirations were diverted onto the
external conditions of the status through conspicuous consumption.
These trends generated an atmosphere of uncertainty which crushed the long standing tradition of prosperity that had followed World
War II. Progress as an organizing principle of
public management, was replaced by an image
that appeared to portray the gradual dissolution of social collective components, and the
loss of unifying values.
It is important to bear in mind that the conservative governments which addressed these
concerns and gradually took charge of the situation, proposed –as a measure to counteract
uncertainty– the adoption of radical policies
that did away with the progressive programmes
which had supported the prolonged post-war
prosperity. From this standpoint, public response took the form of diminished commitments by the community, while ethical individualism was promoted and the time frame
for individual and social calculations was drastically compressed.
The new guidelines attempted to integrate
social diversity by assigning collective priority to the individual achievement of material
well-being objectives. This conservative revo-
lution has indirect repercussions. Where proposals brought about profound change, the erosion of intangible common ethical components
helped to deepen some of the existing cultural
crevices; get rich quick schemes, declining savings, consumption spirals, lack of legitimate
cultural parameters before the emergence of
alternative life-styles, the oversimplifications
of fundamentalism (which supposedly would
bring order to an otherwise chaotic world),
were all expressions which acquired strategic
significance amidst the dissolution of social
commitments characteristic of the liberal era.
Clearly, the technocratic interpretations of
these conservative views which found fertile soil
in most industrialized countries, had a tremendous impact on the underdeveloped fringes. The
economic ideologies and rhetoric that verbalized these feelings attempted to become a universal referent capable of rationally reorienting
any socio-economic scenario, particularly those
emerging from the crisis of the 80’s. As a consequence of the vulnerability of backward countries, these solutions had greater short term impact on more consolidated supply strategies in
these nations, than on the advanced countries
that had formulated them. This was due to the
existence of better structured interests, broaderbase political systems of participation, and a less
repressive social climate.
From these perspectives, educational challenges were formulated as a question of sectoral
efficiency, a fact that dragged the issue of interests and bureaucracies responsible for the
administration of educational supply into center
stage. Thus, it was concluded that “profitdriven” considerations and the autism characteristic of these groups, accounted for the excessive cost of education, its irrelevance and
failure to meet objectives. This first skirmish
with those responsible for the universalist
project, was followed by a barrage against the
high cost of fostering increased cultural homogeneity through educational experiences
shared by every sector in the community. Predicated on these assumptions, the proposed enhancing mechanisms had to assume a radical
posture and institutionalize the vulnerability of
educational space.
57
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
– In order to attain formal efficiency in the
utilization of resources, conservative groups
proposed acknowledging reality and breaking
down the educational supply into parallel subsystems that would discriminate based on the
purchase power of the various clients;
– Supposedly, this initiative would eliminate
the opportunity to collect “funds” –characteristic strategy of centralized systems– to finance the upward mobility of certain sectors;
and, finally
– It was acknowledged that the integrated educational field ideal was no longer compatible
with the resources the community was willing
to commit, while the disintegration of said
institutional space lightened the burden the
public sector had to endure.
It was evident from the solutions proposed,
that the political will to support the universalist
project had weakened substantially. Since the
70’s, propounders of extended schooling in
Latin America, were compelled to compromise
over their priority objectives. Clearly, this is
an indication that the problems afflicting education were part of a larger crisis that challenged the validity of the objectives of liberal
policy. Actually, to the extent the educational
systems entered a universalization phase, the
will to consolidate a unified educational space
grew weaker. The new expressions of social
inequality proved impractical –if school values were to be made universal, and the community were to consist of citizens bonded by a
shared civic culture. Therefore, tensions and
conflicts affected the extension and efficiency
of institutions and processes, making it impossible to reconstruct the response capability of
supply-based systems.
The demand model: The educational
market metaphor
Conservative views on education, assume that
it will take a radical restructuring of schools to
raise the standards of coverage, quality and
adaptability of the contents and teaching systems. They propose that in order to overcome
the autist tendencies implicit in the sovereignty
of supply and respond to society’s needs, the
58
monopolistic bureaucracies must be turned into
amorphous networks sensitive to the pressures
of demand, through competitions that pit educational good producers against one another.
This unprotected space, the result of particular
demands generated by the social order, and
the confluence of competitive supplies, should
yield a process –based on the dynamic forces
concealed in diversity– which will facilitate a
functional relationship between products and
needs. The main assumption contained in this
institutional scheme, is that most families are
reasonably well-informed about the demands
formulated by the qualifications market, to the
point of being willing to assume responsibility
for their decisions. Furthermore, any information gaps may be filled through low cost public or private expedients, which make comparisons possible and help detect trends and
values. In the special case of low income
groups afflicted by structural barriers that limit
their access to information, these deficiencies
may be alleviated by public subsidies which
promote and orient demand.
Within this perspective, the quality of education delivered is ascribed more importance
than coverage, since it makes little sense to
expand a type of education that does not meet
objectives, which clearly constitutes a pre-requisite for the adequate utilization of scant
means. While supply doctrines stress the diffused effect of gradual accumulation, demand
doctrines emphasize the importance of individual learning. Schooling is not a historical
process consisting of the slow permeation of
society by universalist school values, but constitutes an aggregation of persons that possess
a defined set of skills and abilities. In both
approaches schools’ commitments to society
differ; in one case, the nation with its integrating norms is the partner, while in the other the
partner is made up of families and their aspirations.
By accentuating the supremacy of demand,
these solutions attempt to reach quality goals
through opportunities provided by the social
“order”, such as it is manifested in individual
and family preferences. The demand perspective approaches these problems by advancing
Devaluation and privatization of education in Latin America / Luis Ratinoff
the privatization of decision making; it proposes than in order to tackle the four classical
challenges that define quality –relevant instruction, efficient use of resources, efficacy of education processes and equitable results– the protected educational space must be dissolved.
Viewed from this perspective, the distortions
created by monopolistic tendencies constitute
the major obstacles, since:
– The open market regime allows social demands to encourage competition among education producers, which, in turn, forces contents to adjust to the needs as expressed by
social preferences. Amid market forces, the
persistently autist supplies of monopolies are
very likely to succumb.
– A vigorous demand is an assertive expression
of the willingness to acquire education.
Anytime products are acceptable and costs
competitive, an impersonal control of the sector takes over. This situation favours optimum
use of limited resources.
– The specialization of the educational supply
produces a more pliable institution capable of
adopting the procedures that will best resolve
the challenges a particular social situation
calls for.
– The limiting circumstances generated by social inequalities are just one component of the
problem, since the freedom to acquire education ensures a supply which is ample, diversified, and decentralized and which –under the
circumstances– contributes to maximize equity. The public resources released by privatization may be applied –transparently– to subsidize and foster the demands of the needy
and, simultaneously, to encourage competition within a network of producers of educational goods.
This vision replaces doctrines that advocate a
protected institutional space with doctrines that
proclaim an open educational market, the strategic role of the central bureaucracy that administers production, dissemination of formal
culture, and fair distribution of accreditations
through the impersonal mechanisms brought
about by competition among producers and
families’ demands. They propose the “educational industry” model which, as is the case in
supply doctrines, encounters its acid test in the
cultural repercussions of social inequality,
which interfere in the rationality of transactions between the producers and consumers of
education.
Building-up demand
The educational market metaphor is complex,
inasmuch as it is grounded on the rationality
of decisions made by individuals. Although the
social advantages of schooling is perceived as
the product of the sum total of individual marginal advantages, it is clear to everybody that
the demand for education does not materialize
out of thin air. The mechanisms that explain
how rational educational preferences are generated within traditional contexts, rely on a set
of micro-theories about the factors that condition the build-up of demand, the implicit values of education investors and consumers and,
finally, the dynamic relationship between utilitarian expectations and the qualifications market.
Factors that condition demand
Commonplace ideas about what constitutes an
acceptable education are extremely complex
from an aetiological point of view. They synthesize ambiguous commitments between abstract human development ideals and specific
observations on the utilitarian value of formal
accreditations. However, these notions relying
on generic concepts reflect specific reactions
to diverse and heterogeneous situations. To the
extent that the expectations self-generated by
educational supply lose ground as homogenization factor, the impact of diversity brought
about by stratification, and cultural and ethnic
differences, appears to intensify. As a result,
the public horizons individuals use to define
educational objectives become radically “privatized”. Demand theories presuppose that the
freedom to participate should guarantee that
every individual can have access to educational
products “customized” to his needs, although
access restrictions to information, restrict the
availability of options. The qualifications mar59
BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
ket, in turn, imposes rigid reference frameworks.
Demand is, in fact, conditioned by expectations, by the types of education the various
groups are willing to acquire based on available information and the sums each family has
earmarked for such purposes.
Advantages and disadvantages
In this field, expectations are only exceptionally totally utilitarian. As a rule, those in the
know expect education to contribute to personal development, to the analytical and critical spirit, to the creation of community commitments and, generally speaking, to the attainment of various ethical and altruistic objectives. Those who feel that open private demand constitutes a rationality factor in resource
utilization do not deny the importance of these
preferences, to the extent that there is an awareness and an inclination to be accountable for
their responsibilities. However, this view presupposes that if individuals respond moved by
a sense of generosity or traditional altruistic
values, somebody must pay the net cost of services and, hopefully, make up for a shortage of
profits.
Nor do educational demand theories exclude
the likelihood that altruistic objectives may
have indirect utilitarian consequences, no matter how hard to identify, ascribe exclusively to
education, and estimate their economic contribution; in the best of cases, their value for
individuals is residual. The fact that many altruistic preferences are chalked up as disadvantages points to the central position profit
calculations occupy in the notion of social demand rationality. Only to the extent that individuals are compelled to choose with respect
to the alternative use of finite resources, can
the value of advantages and disadvantages implicit in cultural preferences be estimated.
Our understanding of how individuals weigh
the various objectives when estimating the
value of education is still too primitive. From
the build-up of demand standpoint, non-utilitarian concepts are generally shared values and
ideals, to a great extent self-generated by the
60
various educational supply alternatives; utilitarian objectives, on the other hand, are more
conditioned by the prodding of circumstances
surrounding the individual, and these are complex, variegated, and shifting.
Clearly, where inequalities translate into profound cultural contrasts, formal accreditations
become, first and foremost, harbingers of status; within these contexts specific skills –except for certain specializations that enjoy a considerable amount of prestige– do not have a
high relative value. In a culturally homogeneous milieu, however, formal education is not
as closely associated with status, so that under
favorable economic conditions, specializations
tend to be more valuable in the labour markets. Likewise, in rapidly changing scenarios,
adaptability confers an advantage while rigid
qualifications tend to become obsolete.
Uncertainty and information
In this area, events send off confusing signals
and trends are ill-defined. The problem of how
information is generated and interpreted suggest that expectations are shaped following the
lineal projections of incongruous, selective and
incomplete images cast by current trends.
Given individual limitations to process and interpret abundant information, some of the
symptoms of informatic saturation are likely
to increase confusion and force individuals to
fight uncertainty by holding on to a handful of
traditional concepts that may prove more rigid
than those resulting from the autistic nature of
supply. If expectations are, in fact, private
wagers about an uncertain future, the functionality of demands will depend mainly on the
participation of the producers of educational
goods. However, this implies that there will be
groups that will have to pay the cost of bad
bets.
Improving the adaptability of individuals is
a strategy that may partially alleviate this cost,
but this adaptability requires striking a delicate balance between the formative and instrumental ends of education. This warrants some
comments: general formation and personal development contribute to organizing behaviour
Devaluation and privatization of education in Latin America / Luis Ratinoff
through general views; they also contribute to
the formation of commitments through
universalist orientations and conceptualizations
of reality. In this respect, adaptability? is a
factor that conditions the creation of value. The
instrumentalities refer to the provision of means
that spur motivations and abilities to act on
the milieu in order to extract value. As to who
invests in future security based on signals of
the present, calculating the dynamic nature of
social and technological change represents a
complex derivative which requires more information and sophistication than most individuals possess. Hence, all things being equal, people resolve this conflict by betting than more
education has got to be better. Time and money
restrictions force individuals to decide which
is the optimum combination that will yield the
right general formation/specific skills ratio.
Generalists and specialists
These combinations allude to specific educational objectives and contents. It is extremely
difficult to trace the imaginary line that divides instrumental and general education, inasmuch as not all instruments are comprehensible with the same levels of general information. Furthermore, curricular instrumentalities
may either be purely qualifying or represent
techniques and routines intended to enhance
specific performances. According to pedagogical theory, the former contribute to adaptability and the latter to productivity, while both
are based on general formation that organizes
behaviour and provides cultural codes that promote the development of intelligence. In theory,
the proportion of instrumentalities each educational package contains determines what portion of learning may be swapped for utilities.3
Common sense tells us that general education is essential in learning to be, while instru-
3
The so called “symbolic analysts” who coordinate extremely complex tasks, are no exception. They must
have an advanced level of general education that allows them to use sophisticated instruments and interpret data in various high level specialties.
ments facilitate “doing”, being, therefore, easier
to swap for economic benefits. Paradoxically,
figures reveal that those who enjoy a more
prolonged general education have higher incomes than those whose instruction is more
heavily concentrated on instruments.4
In turn, mean values suggest that, so far, the
rate of return is inversely proportional to the
amount invested, although there seems to be a
positive correlation with instrument handling.
That people are inclined to think that more
education guarantees higher income levels, and
concern themselves exclusively with profitability when the amounts destined to education
are limiting, is a most natural reaction.
Financing demand
The resources families and individuals may devote to education come chiefly from direct income, credits against future profits, and subsidies. Although it can be generally claimed that
individuals who are better off economically
enjoy more leeway in financing their children’s
education, the sources also influence the capacities and decisions. The use of direct income is frequently perceived as having a substitution effect, since it ties up resources that
would have otherwise been destined to alternative investments or consumption. Among the
wealthy, this may have little significance, but
for the majority the substitution effect implies
sacrifices that affect their present and future
well-being. A very large number of individuals must carefully weigh the capacities and calculate the risks, particularly when costs are
high. This constitutes a powerful pre-selection
factor that partially relieves the social pressure
exerted on schools, regrettably it also tends to
reproduce cultural inequality patterns through
the generations.
As a rule of thumb, credit will depend on
the level of regular income. Where income is
4
In brief initial education cycles, specialization is associated with higher income when there is a market shortage for a particular skill and market labour demands
are high.
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BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
low, the servicing of the debt may prove unbearable. This explains why many credit systems in the area of education contain implicit
subsidies which soften the long term impact
and broaden its use among the population. Statistics show that credit is more likely to be
used by lower income groups to complement
insufficient salaries, than by those who have
little or nothing. Be that as it may, when realistic calculations of future creditworthiness are
replaced by optimism on the part of grantors
and grantees, the rate of individuals in arrears
is seen to rise and loans, actually, turn into
subsidies that facilitate education among intermediate income sectors.
Lastly, subsidies are instruments that allow
taking greater risks, and by avoiding the negative effects of substitution help overcome the
economic constraints of the beneficiaries. From
this it may be inferred, that in sectors where
incomes are higher, subsidies increase the individuals’ capacity to divert resources to alternative uses.
Financing with own or borrowed resources,
tends to regulate educational demand while
subsidies constitute a stimulus. Demand theories assume that the rationality of the decision
stems from the process of calculating substitutions and assigning to those figures future risks
and benefits. Parents may then be selective in
terms of the acquired product and adjusting
their expectations to the options with higher
rates of return. From this formal perspective,
demand is a more efficient regulator of supply, although form a substantive point of view,
this control factor is deeply rooted in social
and economic inequalities.
Heterogeneity of objectives
From a resource optimization perspective, the
harder the present sacrifices the greater the expectations of future returns. However, as
pointed out earlier, educational investments
appear to yield declining marginal profits. To
assume that the various groups consistently
make the same mistake seems incongruous with
the rationality of demand. Data suggest that
rates of return are not the prevailing criterion
62
among hierarchically organized social groups.
A calculation of the advantages of future certainty may show that going beyond one’s economic boundaries to ensure higher income levels, that is, to pay the premium that clearing –
or preserving– a social barrier demands, may
still be a realistic decision.5
In stratified social systems real economy is
conditioned to the persistence of levels and
barriers. Rational calculations would not be
possible if these factors were ignored. Where
investing in education entails substitution effects with respect to other acquisitions, these
disadvantages will be justified –whatever the
rate of return– if future income levels are contingent on status, basically because this is a
critical investment which, as a rule, is only
made once in a lifetime. Where substitution
effects are absent, a different set of options
apply. Among the well-to-do groups, acquiring an education that is closely associated to
status gets top billing: having little concern for
the profitability of their investment, they would
just as soon reinforce their security.
Since the quantifiable value of these options
are the potential income levels associated with
particular life-styles, it would be a mistake to
think that the well-to-do are obsessed with the
rate of return of these investments. On the contrary, paying the price preservation of the acquired status demands interprets their preferences quite well, including the acquisition of
educational products for personal advancement
and for facilitating adaptation to a specific lifestyle, neither of which are directly utilitarian
aspects. For individuals in this strata, these are
essential cultural “goods” that guarantee “future security”, perceived as an empowering
socio-economic status that opens the door to
opportunities.6
5
6
Calculations on current value of the different educational levels, seem to corroborate the idea that investing in more schooling despite a declining rate of return, constitutes a realistic option.
These notes reiterate the importance of stratification in
the educational goods market. From a utilitarian per
spective, these inefficient expectations are valid to the
Devaluation and privatization of education in Latin America / Luis Ratinoff
In summary, three groups are involved in
building up educational demand: those who
possess precarious resources and are interested
in acquiring a level of education that offers
reasonable yields with as little risk as possible, those who respond to altruistic motives,
and are willing to assume the cost of the disadvantages implied in their choices; and, security consumers that seek an education linked
to status, despite the declining returns that a
costly a career in education may yield.
There is also a broad population segment
which lacking the resources to acquire education is not culturally committed to education.
Where effective demand is absent but investment may, theoretically, yield the highest returns, society usually adopts a protective role,
defines a legal framework and grants subsidies aimed at stirring the sector and reducing
the aggregate social costs the maintenance of
passive classes generates. Therefore, subsidizing basic education is consistent with the utilitarian tenets of the theory, while to the extent
that subsidies encourage vertical mobility, the
rationality of these actions will be linked to
political objectives designed to conquer social
levels, overcome barriers and segregation.
Where stratification is a central differentiation factor, the criteria steering demand are,
by definition, heterogeneous and at times inconsistent. It has been observed that investments in high performance education are heavily subsidized by public funds and, only to the
extent that there are abundant resources and
political mandates, this financing arrangement
is also used to support the mobility of strategic sectors. At the same time, marginal consumption of education intended to preserve status tends to be funded with private resources.
extent they may prove helpful in achieving objectives.
The utilitarian argument, proposes a model based on
increased competition, given the multiplicity of qualifications, a fact that demands optimizing the utilitarian
contents of educational goods. This is a probability. If
non-cultural monopolies continue to be viable, as it
frequently happens, purely utilitarian guidelines will
be inefficient as status preserving barriers.
However, it is important to note that without
the participation of this type of cultural goods
“consumers”, whose aspirations define ultimate
schooling models, important external events
would not occur, since private returns make it
hard to justify the risks involved in investing
on personal training and development, adaptability and –specially– the expansion of highly
qualified groups. Evidently, the lack of subsidies to be devoted to mobility is functional to
the reproduction of inequalities while it constitutes a regulatory factor of effective demand
at the post-primary levels.
Implicit values in utilitarian demand
Private demand has always been an important
source of educational values. This is clearly
seen upon examining the preferences of individuals who are forced to incur tremendous
sacrifices in order to acquire post-basic education. Although demand theories suggest that
substitution options are real, for those willing
to finance their chidren’s education, this constitutes an unavoidable expense that goes with
the standard of living. Thus, the problem is
reduced to how to minimize the uncertainty
surrounding this sort of decision. As a rule of
thumb, risk reducing strategies are simple and
straightforward. First, the absolute quantum of
education seems to represent an additional security factor. Many share the view that the
acquisition of accreditations that involve drawn
out studies but ensure positions that are practically monopolistic, prevent situations where the
abundance of lower level qualifications tend
to saturate the market. Second, betting on winning and highly prestigious qualifications builds
up security and makes choosing among the
various monopolies so much easier. Third, the
reputation of schools which is often associated
with the ulterior economic and social success
of former students, is a feature that tips the
balance in favour of schools that can guarantee such results.
The extended use of this three criteria that
attempt to diminish the prevailing ambiguity
between schooling and labour markets, illustrate the nature of some of the objectives that
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BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
steer private demand. The preference shown
for results is a clear indication of the greater
value ascribed to the social efficacy of education. Those who acquire education favour selective schools that represent a quality level
such that competition from massive education
systems poses no threat. They tend to purchase
education in schools where most of the students follow a well-defined path that circumvents individual vocational experimentation,
whose graduates will enjoy highly prestigious
positions or specializations.
Schools that sell quality education acquaint
ourselves with status maintenance codes, reinforcing the creation of informal primary networks that link schooling excellence to solid
opportunities in the accreditations market. The
typical orientations of these schools stress the
importance of skills that facilitate extracting
value, although they do include the development of contents that are characteristic of general education, which partly contribute to foster the creation of value; however, these are
high risk investments and would almost seem
to be an unexpected by-product. In fact, if the
typical topics that define formal education’s
contribution to creativity are examined, they
will surely include subsidies to counter these
risks and to offset the subsequent difficulty
that the individual appropriation of the rewards
of creativity represents. Developing personal
skills, fostering human vocations, experimenting with new horizons, and extending culture,
give rise to enormous external occurrences, although from the standpoint of utilitarian demand theory, their diffuse benefits lack priority. Were it not for culture “consumers”, public subsidies, or private philanthropy, these
goals would be extremely hard to finance.
Impact of education in personal income
Education’s social demand as a supply optimization factor is based on the principle that there
is a cause and effect relationship between education acquisition and higher income. However, evidence suggests that the variance is significant and the meaning of that cause and effect relationship is ambiguous. Although seem64
ingly, educational quantum is associated with
income levels, nevertheless profitability is seen
to be higher where investment in education is
lower. This suggests that where a clear monopolistic advantage exists, education is, fact,
a factor to be reckoned. Something similar occurs in situations where educational credentials are essential to the performance of certain
positions and professions.
The general situation is different, however,
as suggested by the rigidities generated by the
various attempts to over-extend credentialism.
Although there is evidence that corroborates
that educational qualifications do prepare for
performing in more productive occupations, the
truth is that the modern concept of a cause and
effect relationship between education and personal income stems from a peculiar mobility
experience: the possibility of employing more
individuals with better formal qualifications due
to the mushrooming of well-paid jobs. To the
extent that this occurred in several countries
between 1950 and 1970, the middle strata and
their economists, were inclined to ascribe a
positive value to the private economic worth
of acquiring education.
This asseveration is hard to uphold when
school qualifications cease to be an individual
advantage and/or the supply of jobs shrinks,
particularly the better paying ones.
Although from the social point of view, there
are founded reasons to believe that human capital which represents a well qualified labour
force contributes to the aggregated rationality
which calls for investing in technological modernization, from the standpoint of individual
advantage, the hypothesis that conceives formal accreditations as monopolistic advantages
seems more plausible than the simple cause
and effect relation between education and income. This is not only consistent with the interplay of factors within the economic theory,
but it also sheds a light on the operational dynamics of the qualifications market. It also
opens the possibility of reviewing the existing
relationship between schools, stratification and
society’s segregationist patterns.
More simply put, the hypothesis suggests:
– That individuals have a better chance of seiz-
Devaluation and privatization of education in Latin America / Luis Ratinoff
ing a significant portion of the surplus generated by their higher output when they have
exclusive qualifications and cannot be replaced.
– That to the extent that the accreditations market begins to crowd this comparative advantage diminishes; the saturation of opportunities eliminates monopolies, and incomes decline accordingly.
This explains: why the basic education concept (in terms of facilitating access to economic participation) is so dynamic and to a
great extent keyed to technological progress;
how do inequalities –within the accreditations
market– contribute to using education as a discrimination factor; and the rate of return fluctuations observed for the various types and levels of education.
In the past twenty years, the erosion of education’s social value witnessed in countries
which lacked universal subsidies –restricted or
eliminated them altogether– was probably
partly due to the fact that the relationship between costs and the experience of individual
utilitarian results yielded by education, was not
persuasive enough.
Where subsidies are targeted, rhetoric emphasis on the private advantage of schooling
may be counterproductive. The inflation of expectations could well exceed the dynamics of
opportunity, and to the extent that the universal validity of public concern is challenged,
dilemmas that have no answer from a direct
individual advantage perspective, could surface.
From this conceptual framework, it becomes
extremely difficult to defend the position that
a sector of the population must invest on their
children’s education while being forced to contribute to the education of those less fortunate.
Social resistance to bear the financial burden
of educational subsidies for those without
means, a phenomenon observed in countries
where a large percentage of the educational
obligation has been privatized, could be explained in terms of the rational expectations
this situation has given rise to: while direct
and immediate benefits are not apparent, they
share the financial responsibility of an education that not only does not benefit them, but, if
successful, contributes to improving the work
situation of the subsidized sectors whose potential participation in the labour market may
reduce the future rate of return of the education they themselves will be acquiring for their
own children.
The market metaphor: privatization of
supply
Those who use the educational market metaphor to envision the sector’s operation, assume
that in order to optimize the use of factors
institutional supply must vie for social demand.
This raises the need to eliminate monopolies
and privatize supply. As in other activity fields,
the success of privatization depends on the rationality of the process implemented to transfer skills and responsibilities from the public
to the private sphere, so that the latter may
play the role the institutional model ascribes
to decentralized producers. However, the creation of initial favorable conditions is not
enough; capacities must also be promoted. The
theoretical and ideological rationale of privatization lends formal and rhetorical consistency
to these actions, but the outcome of these reforms are contingent on the existence of a flexible decentralized education system capable of
achieving the objectives the public system has
so blatantly failed to.
The privatization process starts in Latin
America, when the deterioration of the public
system forces most of those who could afford
it, to purchase a better quality education from
private producers. Thus, the concept of schools
as public spaces that congregate individuals of
different social origin and of the importance
of interacting with various groups as a vital
part of education, is essentially rejected. The
second stage of this evolution reflects the problems generated by a profound fiscal crisis, and
begins when the process of deterioration is well
under way. At this point, public schools are
plagued with deficiencies and pressures that
threaten the viability of the education universalization project. The loss of primary objectives causes an adjustment of intermediate
goals, more in keeping with the realities of the
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moment. This gives rise to the secondary purpose of concentrating the public sector’s products and resources on groups that lack the
means to acquire education from private purveyors. The third stage has been much more
radical, since it intends to transfer responsibility to a variety of decentralized actors minimizing the role of public sector schools.
This trend suggests that social realities tended
to undermine the goal of a universal culture,
and validate the principle that the segmentation of education as a mechanism to respond
to the various demands, constituted an indirect
path towards achieving equity, so long as subsidies became more transparent and participation by education producers was encouraged.
In order for this strategy –based on accepting inequality– to contribute to equity, two conditions must be met: provide the same quality
basic education to all the segments of the population, and open spaces of opportunity so that
subsidized groups may acquire additional education based on school merit. Otherwise, it becomes difficult to establish to what extent are
schools a factor in overcoming or ratifying social segregation. In fact, the segmentation of
schools and educational processes on the basis
of social background is an organizing principle that tends to stratify the quality of instruction. Even if conditions were right and resources were plentiful to expand coverage to
all the population, the differences in quality
constitute a strategic problem that needs to be
resolved so that privatization can yield higher
levels of equity.
The organizational metaphor of the educational market assumes the existence of –or the
feasibility of promoting– an institutional supply able to efficiently respond to the incentives created by the various demands. The pliability of supply is an essential feature, since
the success of the model is predicated on replacing centralized bureaucracy with the adaptability offered by educational entrepreneurs. It
is within this novel context that the problem
of quality education is formulated. In theory,
competition should encourage a more efficient
resource allocation, hence substantial coverage and quality improvements, through the in66
troduction of innovations and thrift. But, in
fact, as pointed earlier the real challenge is to
turn the conditions created by openness into
capacities.
As in other fields, the building up of a dynamic supply is limited by the very nature of
the demand which in this case closely mimics
the stratification profile. Clearly, production
deconcentration opens avenues not available
in former centralized systems, although we
must remember that the demand that must be
satisfied is rigidly segmented. On the one hand,
a sector of society with the necessary means
to acquire prolonged education, whose academic excellence criteria are tightly associated
with this purpose; a demand that is, nevertheless, expressed in an atomized fashion since
only a reduced group of families can afford to
pay the cost of excellence, and are interested
in avoiding crowdedness. On the other hand,
there is that subsidized sector, which harbours
considerably lower expectations, where the
quality of education is, to a great extent, determined by the level of subsidies.
The former sector is much like a market
where buyers acquire the quality their purchasing power allows, and producers who compete
within limits and enjoy the autonomy to define for themselves the real criteria of academic excellence. It is a heterogeneous competition that offers different goods.7 The market metaphor does not fit as snugly in the subsidized sector for an important portion of the
demand is spurred by subsidies. In most cases
fiscal conditions restrict the amount of resources earmarked for education, and in addition to financial restrictions, there are obstacles that hinder the institutionalization of quality regulations and reduce the effectiveness of
educational processes in socially adverse environments.
Nobody will question the fact that education
is associated with the institutionalization of
regulations and the provision of funds. With-
7
Actually, the quality of cultural goods offered varies
tremendously, a fact that restricts the scope and intensity of competition.
Devaluation and privatization of education in Latin America / Luis Ratinoff
out these elements, competition stands little
chance of yielding a better product. In order to
understand participation, it must be associated
to the resources and regulations of countries
where the privatization of educational responsibility has been materialized. There are two
parallel education systems that respond to different purposes and factors. The non-subsidized
sector, where educational demand is atomized
and supply is generated by a limited number
of institutions, which preserve their quality
standards by selective recruiting; and the subsidized sector –which also responds to social
demand– where education production and acquisition is mostly centred on the public sector.
Competition and quality in the education
market
The quality of non-subsidized education is the
result of a diversity of factors: it requires the
participation of families that can afford the
price of such an education, altruistic education
entrepreneurs willing to assign a portion of
their profits to this objective and, a community characterized by high expectations in terms
of the type of instruction that best suits its
needs. The complexity of these conditions suggests that the relationship between competition in the education market and the quality of
its products is ambiguous. Not every purchaser
has the means to freely select the best product.
Information is scant, difficult to use and has
little bearing on short term decisions. In fact,
parents rely on cultural and social perceptions,
and on the reputation the various schools have
earned.
Information can be a problem. As a rule, it
varies with the educational level. In basic education it essentially involves social and cultural environments and minimum regulations.
Middle and higher education are more concerned with maximized performance. This is
specialized information that has to be produced,
must be accessible and, hopefully, understood.
In numerous countries there are private or public systems devoted to this task and publications that disseminate their findings. However,
these indicators are hard to interpret and its
non-institutional use is restricted.
Furthermore, the participation of supply side
producers is limited by the capacity of schools
to select potential students. In our experience,
if the medium does not secure candidates having at least basic qualifications, selection becomes an effective economic strategy to maintain internal excellence standards. Paradoxically, this appears to be the sort of market
where the most prestigious schools define admission requirements to compete among themselves. If the criteria used are too lax and anybody can get in, their reputation may be endangered.
This clientele selecting capacity is an essential component of prestige. Schools that can
screen their students have a better chance to
maintain or attain a certain level of prestige.
To the extent that roles are reversed and the
selection process is done by students or parents, school survival will depend on their ability to offer the most enticing products; not surprisingly, academic excellence is bound to supply conditioning factors.
Although the reputation of schools always
reflects a heterogeneous set of short term expectations associated with the social status of
the clientele, it must be borne in mind that
excellence levels must be maintained in the
medium and long terms if academic excellence
is to be preserved. In order to invest in excellence, schools need to enjoy solid financial stability. Education firms that depend on enrolment fees, and must worry about optimizing
profits, are in no position to release funds for
altruistic purposes and they are susceptible to
the fluctuations of demand. The initial advantage of non-profit associations and foundations
is obvious, since they can subsidize the operation and adjust to lean years. Excellence constitutes an oncost that must be financed without risking the economic viability of the firm.
Donations and internal cash generation are two
important sources of extra income without
which many schools would not be able to afford the price excellence commands.
Since not all education “shoppers” can pay
the price tag put on quality, highly prestigious
schools normally have limited vacancies and
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are very selective of their clientele, thus minimizing the risk of incurring the cost implied in
absorbing dysfunctional elements stemming
from the cultural heterogeneity of students. This
certainly provides an initial advantage over institutions that have to necessarily cope with
this external expenditures. In this scenario, if
the supply of excellence producers increased
and the students themselves selected their
schools, the positive effects of competition
would soon be felt. Should this happen, the
importance of reputation in the selection process would diminish. It is not known whether
an increase in participation and the disappearance of monopolistic advantages would have
adverse effects on factors that contribute to
the autonomy of supply, some of which are
essential to quality. This is an area where the
sovereignty of demand does not guarantee that
social aspirations and short term cultural requirements will result in the medium and long
term preservation and improvement of quality;
these pressures are more likely to regulate the
price of education, particularly in the face of
declining returns.
These reflections raise a question; does the
quality of supply in the area of free participation depend on competition among producers
or model imitation. So far, supporting imitation seems to be the more efficient strategy,
however, this implies admitting that there are
advantages in establishing supply side monopolies.
The challenge behind subsidized education
Privatizing education, releases the State from
certain obligations; this facilitates the provision of extra resources for priority objectives,
but does not address the essential problems
afflicting public education. In theory, it seems
reasonable to think that this economic solution
will contribute to alleviate fiscal pressure and,
supposedly, permit a more equitable utilization of subsidies. While the amount of released
funds may be sizeable, the possibility of expanding coverage and improving the quality
of public services, is undeniable. The challenge
confronted by the subsidized sector of educa68
tion, is contingent on sufficient subsidies, the
size of coverage gaps, the costs originated by
the cultural heterogeneity of marginal groups
and, lastly, on the efficacy of teaching systems.
Inasmuch as wide coverage gaps persist, the
attainment of quality goals seems far fetched.
Although separating these two dimensions
makes little sense, since dropout and repetition rates limit service expansion, tackling both
problems simultaneously represents an extremely complex task, even if ample resources
were available. The requirements originated by
cultural differences cannot be solved with resources alone; if teaching strategies are not
flexibilized, and relationships between school
and community are not made more functional,
achieving objectives may turn into an uphill
trek. These conditions are not improvised, their
logistics are complex, and they demand a period of evolution. In turn, lack of resources
can certainly constitute a serious obstacle, since
the pressure this situations give rise to, tend to
take the form of sectoral conflicts acting as
barriers to the extension of education towards
the low demand groups.
Furthermore, the subsidized sector is characterized by two not always congruent objectives: universalize access to education and
make teaching quality competitive in the credentials market. Lest we forget, even in the
less diversified environment catered by the nonsubsidized sector, one of the conditioning factors of excellence is the selective recruiting of
students. In the public area, the educational
task is much more complex since it must produce an homogeneous product which is equivalent in quality to that offered in the private
sector, but coverage must be extended to include extremely heterogeneous cultural strata.
Perhaps an accurate definition of public responsibility should stress the nature of its twofold task; incorporation and promotion.
Cultural diversity calls for adaptation. While
in the private sector schools vie for reputation
and students for admission, in the public sector the strategic problem is to disseminate
schooling culture in media that respond to alternative values. Under these circumstances,
Devaluation and privatization of education in Latin America / Luis Ratinoff
preparation for modern life translates into projecting the influence of school values towards
sectors extremely impervious to the prevailing
cultures.
School adaptation to these types of environments has two main components. The success
of its “civilizing” function depends on the
school’s capacity to fill social “voids”, spur
students into committing themselves to learning tasks, and to retain them for prolonged
periods in order to augment their exposure to
the new culture. Thus rationalized, school becomes a strategic instrument of segregation reducing policies. Nevertheless, educational outcomes are conditioned by “friction” with the
social milieu in which they operate. Teaching,
on the other hand, has little or no direct influence over this milieu. It has been suggested
that segregation reducing impacts only accumulate in the medium and long term, while in
the short term they substantially reduce the
effectiveness of schooling. The progressive effect of education, is a function of the positive
balance between its efficacy and the milieu’s
resistance. School efficacy seems to depend to
a large extent on community support, the qualifying impact of social policies, and on the influence of favorable contextual factors.
School adaptation to remedy the adverse effects of cultural differences, clearly affects the
quality of final product costs. Spontaneous adaptations usually cause a significant deterioration of the system, deplorable use of resources
and extremely low qualities. Adaptations designed to control the negative aspects of diversity avoid these extremes, but, also fail to produce an educational quality worthy of competing. The upward mobility of these schools is
negligible, since the lack of economic means
is compounded by the inadequate quality of
the product and the low prestige of their credentials.
Not surprisingly, public grief has become a
trade mark of the subsidized sector. Results
are poor, resources precarious, while working
in adverse settings does not help. It is extremely
difficult to keep morale up in such a system,
and economic limitations prevent giving priority to this task. As pointed out earlier, these
situations give rise to internal interests whose
conflict dynamics tend to mediatize the attainment of primary educational objectives.
Structural values that influence education
devaluation
To the above mentioned, we must add contemporary trends that affecting the role of
schools have catalyzed education devaluation,
as a factor in the process of value building.
For more than twenty years the relationship
between education and mobility has been deteriorating, credentialism has become a formal
element of recruiting, social institutions that
served as complements to schools have weakened, and teaching is seen as a decreasing influence on socialization. This is generally expressed in four interpretative hypotheses:
– Education expansion tends to dilute the individuals’ economic benefits. In fact, to obtain
similar benefits, the educational investment
of one generation must be considerably larger
than the previous one. Furthermore, the cutbacks or phase outs of public funds adds to the
ambivalence of placing resources that cannot
guarantee status, let alone mobility.
Without public funds, the willingness to take
risks whose potential benefits are increasingly
less apt to be privatized decreases ostensibly.
In other words, this situation not only affects
the prestige of education but also the prestige
of value building education, which as a rule
usually gives rise external events.
– Modern recruiting systems normally use credentials as a selection criterion. When these
constitute a truly discriminating monopoly,
they become highly prestigious, since they
condition access. In these cases educational
systems are perceived as bureaucracies that
administer status through the granting of
accreditations.
Where the supply of well-paid positions is
slow to increase with respect to aggregated
demand, the growth of higher accreditations
tends to depress the average income of these
groups, so that said accreditations cannot guarantee access to these positions or equivalent
future advantages. If this situation were a
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structural condition of labour markets schools
would have no choice but to stress their selective functions by “cooling off” aspirations. In
the real world, education’s social prestige is
the product of its positive functions as a value
building and upward mobility factor.
– In modern cities, families are subjected to
group pressures that intensify group instability, restricting its functions and affecting its
unity. This has a tremendous effect on school
effectiveness whose tasks assume that families are not only capable of socializing, but
that the values they impart are complementary
to education.
To the traditional discontinuity problems between family culture and school values, a new
component created by group instability is
added. If families fail to produce a coherent
socialization, schools are faced with the complex task of channeling their new clientele’s
insecurities, disorientation, and lack of internal discipline. Where families can no longer
play the role of the grand homogenizer, a
considerable amount of the school’s time and
funds will have to be employed in reducing
excessive diversity and absorbing emotional
instability problems. Data suggest that, so far,
schools have not proven adequate in terms of
substituting family socialization. Their success in this area has been compensative more
than anything else, and generally imply increasing operational costs and sacrificing results.
The “educability” problem has increased
within the population, but the development of
capacities to confront this challenge is still
fragmentary and experimental. Society pressures schools to take charge of these new
functions, while cutting back resources and
maintaining the same expectations.
– Formal education’s influence on socialization
has declined due to the presence of ubiquitous
and massive factors that reduce schooling
effectiveness, and may even transmit dissonant knowledge and courses of action.
This milieu vies with schools and consolidates
alternative cultures whose dynamism feeds
off the marketing of popular values. These
modern urban cultures focus on the creation of
70
language, codes, values and expectations
which impinge directly and subliminally on
behaviour, in marked contrast with the
instruction imparted in schools mediatized
by attention, motivation, persuasion, and internalization of abstract instruments and notions.
Closing thoughts
Systems based on the dynamic nature of educational demand, assume that social and economic conditions are favorable for creating a
competitive educational industry, specialized
in the production of educational goods, capable of improving methods, reducing costs and
achieving quality goals. Experience with this
model suggests that these achievements are not
compatible with social segregation and the regressive profile characteristic of income distribution.
Structural solutions inspired on the market
metaphor can diminish pressure on public resources, and inasmuch as they reduce monopolies, make conflicts of interests more manageable. They also contribute to a greater transparency of resources although can not guarantee their being proportional to the needs and
problems.
If in socially regressive scenarios, the greater
efficiency in the use of limited resources is a
necessary but insufficient factor to overcome
barriers, the progressive impact of teaching depends on the definition of public goals. A less
decentralized institutional apparatus is likely
to have virtues; however, in order for the created conditions to become capacities, there is
an essential need for special inducements that
favour the development of strategic education
advancement areas.
The pedagogical and institutional response
to deprivation and overage, consists of schools
able to generate a highly intense learning environment, but nobody can hope to achieve
this objective exclusively through the use of
transparent subsidies and competition among
producers. Evidently, to attain quality goals in
adverse environments, schools must operate as
veritable educational “greenhouses”. Colom-
Devaluation and privatization of education in Latin America / Luis Ratinoff
bia’s Escuela Nueva project, exemplifies one
such an experience, but the frustrations and
commitments its dissemination entails, is an
indication of the complexity involved when
promoting high intensity learning environments.
We know little about the specific inducements and support systems educational greenhouses require. Regrettably, there are aspects
that muddle discussion and analysis. The view
that the challenge can be met through the establishment of “light technologies” that boost
performance without raising costs, is a rhetorical argument that places the institutional dilemma behind the absorption of strategies that
demand a greater articulation of actors and factors, on a second level of importance. Some
believe that community involvement does not
always yield profits, so that the task confronting schools may be likened to that of a cultural “colonization”, where the civilizing influence has sufficient external backing to fully
absorb the financial disharmonies stemming
from an adverse medium. Independent of the
importance of having this external support, the
mobilization of community interests and groups
appears as an important factor in the consolidation of high intensity educational environments. This last point alludes to the relationship between teaching and the social programmes that are attempting to promote local
self-government systems, strengthen family
units, prepare for participation and similar activities.
Finally, the transfer of explanatory “metaphors” from other fields of knowledge can help
uncover the importance of some strategic variables, but, it can also introduce oversimplifications that may distort both priorities and solutions. The market metaphor highlights the essential role of motivations and the use of resources; however, to expect that competition
between the producers of educational goals will
reduce costs, spur innovation, and open spaces
for those excluded, strikes more as a rhetorical
hyperbole which contradicts the very contributions of this analytical approach. In fact, neither are educational goods comparable nor does
the information contribute to clarify the link
between quality and price; nor does it establish whether those who –in theory– stand to
benefit the most from acquiring a qualifying
school culture, have the motivation or the
means to participate in the qualifications “market”. Apparently, the economics of education
is considerably more complex.
The relationship between innovation and participation by multiple producers, is not a first
derivative. If innovators could patent their solutions and profit from them, as is sometimes
done, we would probably see a mushrooming
of innovation companies utilizing venture capital. For the moment, the problem this strategy
confronts is that the resources that could be
extracted from the sector are too limited; furthermore, adapting innovations to institutional
and specific cultural contexts, demands time
and money. Under these circumstances, experience shows that the innovation chain will hold
only if altruistic agents intervene.
Research on the mechanisms required to produce pedagogical innovations are urgently
needed. Quite often, successful models followed by emulation processes are tried out,
but these run into rigid institutional systems
along the way, which frequently have different interests. We have learned that when they
fail to develop a social support infrastructure,
their effects are limited.
In closing: clearly, the educational problems
of highly stratified societies do not have
“magic” or ideological solutions. The existing
systems and the adopted dissemination models, must operate in the midst of unfriendly
environments. Hence, the importance of defining public goals. This requires, however, political coalitions interested in forming citizens
who are, in turn, interested in being formed.
But, under current circumstances, are such coalitions feasible?
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A DEBATE BEYOND FRONTIERS:
Regional Office for Education’s Tele-seminars
Arturo Matute*
UNESCO’s Regional Office for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean,
has launched a new interactive distance education modality that facilitates the
analyses of major issues involving education in Ibero-America; the Tele-seminars.
Thus far, invitations to participate have been extended to faculties of education, as
well as ministries and research centres, however, the idea is to expand
participation to other actors active in education. Tele-seminars are conducted
through satellite T.V., and rely on written documents and discussions via
INTERNET. They constitute a novel encounter modality among academicians that
going beyond geographical borders creates its own space for those who share
similar concerns.
Distance dialogue
Having read an interesting article, the sort that
unleashes deep spiritual reflection and demands
sharing it with others, could there be anything
better than being able to converse with the
author of such a stimulating piece? and what
if several renowned specialists, each from his
own corner of the world, could partake of this
intercourse?
Within the dream of the scholar, who is always seeking dialogue, the need for a new concept of distance education makes itself evident. At this level, as opposed to the traditional modality, the information delivered
serves merely to trigger dialogue, and it is this
dialogue –the driving force of the educational
action– that becomes the “Active Ingredient”
in a growth process that leads to new heights
of knowledge and to developing stronger affective links with this knowledge.
Dialogue in distance education, to the extent
* Arturo Matute. Regional specialist on educational technology. UNESCO’s Regional Office for Education
72
that it can contribute to overcoming some of
the major problems that hinder the training of
new teachers, may provide a fertile path towards improving the quality of education.
First attempts
Two tele-seminars have been conducted to date;
a first seminar on Environmental Education
was held during the first semester of 1995. A
second such experience carried out in two
blocks (Nov–Dec 95 and March-April 96) addressed the topic Quality of Education. Seven
institutions from five countries participated as
rapporteurs, while eighteen institutions representing ten other countries also attended the
first meeting. Ten rapporteurs and ten commentators from nine countries attended the second seminar that enlisted the participation of
thirty-eight institutions from eleven countries.
These seminars allow a great number of
scholars scattered all over the globe to participate with distinguished specialists (rapporteurs,
commentators, and other participants) on the
discussion of common interest current topics
without leaving their desks.
A debate beyond frontiers: Regional Office for Education’s Tele-seminars / Arturo Matute
The first Tele-seminar took the form of a television documentary which complemented with
written reprints comprised the basis for subsequent E-mail discussions. However, these shows
meant too much of an effort for the universities
involved in their production –which lacking the
proper equipment were forced to improvise as
they went along– and a great deal of work for
the UNESCO Santiago’s Coordination unit.
The second Tele-seminar included brief on
camera presentations by commentators made
continuous by the presence of an M.C. (interviewer). The result was a sobber show directed
at university graduates deeply involved in this
area. UNESCO-SANTIAGO assumed responsibility for the television production and, as previously, reprints of the presentations were timely
forwarded to the participating institutions, to allow for preliminary study. Results have been
encouraging, since the difficulties associated with
television production formerly experienced by
the universities were removed, and dialogue and
discussion proved as dynamic as before.
The need for tele-seminars
Educational authorities from the various countries agree on the need to foster dialogue among
top regional specialists, and thus stir the different action and reflection nuclei (universities, ministries, research centres, NGO’s).
Project participants are periodically reviewing their conceptual frameworks, and impartial and substantiated external opinions are always gratefully accepted. On the other hand,
we know that the clash of ideas marks the
ascending slope (spiral-like according to some
specialists) towards the richer confines of
thought. Hence, the exchange of experiences
and even simple contact nurturing dialogue,
are seen as a vital need for all those engaged
in some form of intellectual activity.
For a number of reasons, this need is –all
too often– not met within university walls, being only partially satisfied by sporadic meetings among peers which open spaces for the
presentation of ideas, experiences and –most
importantly– debates.
Encounters involving specialists are costly,
and require complex arrangements in terms of
time availability, transportation, etc., all of
which translates into highly condensed, intense
activities where the issues are superficially
touched on, much to the chagrin of participants.
Technology and opinion exchange
In a recent past, some of the novel possibilities of communication technology began to
surface, facilitating a glimpse of Marshall
McLuhan’s Global Village and, associated with
it, heralding the emergence of a new communicational era made possible by technological
progress. This is the underlying concept of
TELE-SEMINARS.
As the 500 year commemoration of America’s discovery drew near, Spain –among a host
of other significant initiatives– established the
satellite communication system known as
HISPASAT which links all the iberoamerican
countries. The countries of the region could
access the satellite through an educational television channel which, at no cost to the user,
could be used for a specific period of time.
At Spain’s request, the Asociación de
Televisión Educativa Iberoamericana ATEI, the
entity responsible for operating HISPASAT
broadcasts, was created precisely in October,
1992. UNESCO would serve as a consultant
body to ATEI.
The Regional Office for Education (UNESCO-SANTIAGO) was invited to participate in
this undertaking by spurring the production of
badly needed broadcasts in the region to feed
through to the T.V. channel. Additionally,
UNESCO was asked to design a broadcast following the lines of its own educational support
objectives for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Before committing our participation, we had
to sit back and analyze the pros and cons this
new panorama presented. Initial reflection
called for adopting a prudent “Devil’s Advocate” stance; none of the major objectives –the
basic working premise of UNESCO-SANTIAGO Regional Office for Education– needs
a satellite for fulfillment.
On the other hand, after the long trek that
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BULLETIN 39, April 1996 / The Major Project of Education
started in the seventies, we were –once again–
confronted with the classical paradox of educational technology: take a solution and look
for a problems that fits it.
However, neither the contention that satellites are not really necessary, nor the seeming
paradox were enough to conceal the message
from the future implied in Spain’s invitation.
The powerful communication technologies are
part of our intuitive knowledge of the new educational paradigm that will prevail in the coming century. Learning the rational utilization
of the new technologies at the service of education, was a challenge that had to be met.
The need to interact
The utilization of an instrument with the scope
and characteristics of an educational satellite,
provides food for thought. If attempts by a
group of South American countries sponsored
by UNESCO to launch project SERLA (Regional Educational System for Latin America)
–which relied on a satellite to impart education– met with failure in the seventies, it was
because conditions were not right. In the nineties, however, technological progress, the consolidation of democratic regimes, open-ended
policies, and the financial solution provided
by Spain, have made conditions right. Satellites may now be used to educate, and not only
in a group of countries but in all the region
including Spain.
But, what kind of education? For whom?
How is it to be delivered? All these questions
take on a gargantuan dimension when the delivery instrument used reaches two continents
and millions of persons.
Education cannot be likened to rain that falls
indiscriminately from the skies to wet it all. One
thing is clear at this point in time, education is a
construction process, whose key elements are
nestled deep within the spirit of each individual
and, hence, the powerful technological communication action –we are intent on mastering–
should not only deliver information but, at the
same time stir the individual, give rise to cognitive imbalances, open spaces, etc. All this means
that the huge educational potential of television
74
by satellite requires, to do justice to its claim,
the presence of a basic component; interactivity,
multi-directional and across all levels.
The tele-seminar model
The challenge was to imagine a model that
would permit interacting with others in an atmosphere of intercontinental dimensions. Under these conditions, the “seminar” proved to
be an ideal scheme, since it convokes participants who share the same levels and common
interests. Its educational essence lies not so
much in the information conveyed but much
more so in the richness of the dialogue and in
the creative strength born out of controversy.
The information contributed by participants in
different corners of the world, may give rise to
debate within the various groups and levels.
The electronic mail is the technological complement that put the finishing touches on the
model. Having proposed a subject of discussion through a written document and a television show which is collectively watched by
those participating, a first debate is carried out
by each group on a classroom basis. The documents generated by such discussions are forwarded via E mail to the rapporteurs and/or
commentators, and are shared with everybody
who is listed in a directory under a nickname.
Rapporteurs and commentators will respond
from their respective countries in identical fashion, thus ensuring that answers are received
by all, and starting a dialogue sequence that
should last a week when the new show is aired.
This new show opens new discussions and
reinforces previous ones, since the general topic
is the same. Ideally, dialogue should go beyond the initial question and answer period
and become a full fledged debate. This is being accomplished along with the dissemination of pertinent information on events, onstream research activities and the forwarding
of documents through the electronic medium.
Participation and some of its foibles
UNESCO’s Regional Office for Education
through the PICPEMCE network and other
A debate beyond frontiers: Regional Office for Education’s Tele-seminars / Arturo Matute
media, called on all the teacher training centres and ministries willing to participate on teleseminars. The prerequisites are the following:
– Have access to Spain’s educational television
channel either directly (ATEI members) or
through cable T.V.
– Have access to E mail through INTERNET.
– Be willing to set a permanent group to follow
the evolution of the tele-seminar.
– Have something to contribute to the general
debate.
UNESCO’s Regional Office for Education offers participating institutions a complete set of
reprints and relevant information to be used in
establishing communications via E mail. Participation in the first two tele-seminars has been
free of charge.
Although tele-seminars are very simply structured, some of the institutions still have some
internal wrinkles that should be ironed out, if
full participation is to be achieved.
The first mental block that had to be eliminated during the organizational phase of the
first Tele-seminar, had to do with the preoccupation exhibited by some universities about the
scheme of the course (as a medium for transmitting information) as opposed to the interactive nature of the seminar. Once under way,
we verified the surprising lack of informatic
culture within participating universities which
trammeled a smooth and fast transition into
the great open spaces for debate made possible by the tele-seminar.
Several universities –which despite having
the technical support have taken tele-seminars
only to the classroom debate level (and enjoyed it according to their own testimony)–
reported to the Coordinating unit the great interest aroused by the shows and written presentations, but strangely failed to make their
presence noticed at the wide electronic debate
horizon. This inhibition may the product of a
number of things, but at its core lies the gap
between the traditional academic world and
informatic practice.
We know that within actively participating
universities, only small groups dare partake of
the grand dialogue through INTERNET. Some
universities, however, have made a conscious
effort to make E mail available to teachers,
researchers and students thus widening and
enriching the participation base.
Short term prospects
Starting from the new commitments undertaken
by UNESCO’s Regional Office for Education
geared towards expanding and developing the
tele-seminars modality, and based on the participation experience being built at numerous
institutions, it is feasible to predict an increased
utilization of peak technology now economically and technologically affordable to education oriented institutions. From where we currently stand, a combination involving a teleseminar under UNESCO’s counseling, constitutes one of the most promising formulas to
bring both into the academic sphere.
The new experiences directed exclusively at
students of the teaching profession, which will
allow them to establish direct contact with the
authors of textbooks, are but another example
of the benefits that properly used technologies
may bring to today’s world. Soon, the experience will have to be extended to secondary
education students. We are confident that participation at these levels will not be a problem,
in fact, it ought to be well organized in anticipation of excessive demand. Furthermore, the
unexpected expansion of electronic mail, which
is increasingly becoming a household item in
the homes of many intellectuals and academicians, bears the promise of informal debate
networks inspired in tele-seminar initiatives.
Given the immense choice of topics suitable
to a tele-seminar scheme, we are certain that
other institutions devoted to various disciplines
will be interested in following our lead, making use of the model we are perfecting.
We believe that the concept proposed and
experienced by UNESCO’s Regional Office
for Education and supported by ATEI through
HISPASAT, has enormous potential and may
be projected into the future. It all depends on
how interested institutions and professional
groups are, about hitching on to a blossoming
culture.
75
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Books Serie
49. Necesidades básicas de aprendizaje. Estrategias de acción. UNESCO/IDRC. 1993. 343 pp.
50 La educación de adultos en América Latina ante el próximo siglo. UNESCO/UNICEF 1994, 270 pp.
51. Mujer y educación de niños en sectores populares. UNESCO/Convenio Andrés Bello. 1995. 91 pp.
52. Educación en población. UNESCO/OREALC- IEU. 1994. 142 pp.53
53. Innovaciones en la gestión educativa. UNESCO, 1995. 166pp.
54. Hacia una nueva institucionalidad en educación de jóvenes y adultos. Luis Oscar Londoño. UNESCOConvenio Andrés Bello. 1995. 180 pp.
55. Vamos creciendo juntas. Alfabetización de la mujer campesina indígena en Perú. Gonzalo Portocarrero.
UNESCO. 1995. 65 pp.
56. Analfabetismo femenino en Chile de los ‘90. María E. Letelier. UNESCO/UNICEF. 1996. 172 pp.
57. Construyendo desde lo cotidiano. Pedagogía de la lectoescritura. María Dominguez, Mabel Farfán.
UNESCO-Convenio Andrés Bello. 1996. 146 pp.
58. Perspectiva educativa del desarrollo humano en América Latina. UNESCO-PNUD. 1996. 176 pp.
59. Situación educativa en América Latina y el Caribe. 1980-1994. UNESCO. 1996. 702 pp.
60. The state of education in Latin America and the Caribbean. 1980-1994. UNESCO. 1996. 674 pp.
“Estudios” Series
26. Género, educación y desarrollo. G. Messina. 1994. 96 pp.
27. Medición de la calidad de la educación: Por qué, cómo y para qué? Vol.I. 1994. 90 pp.
28. Medición de la calidad de la educación: instrumentos. Vol.II. 1994. 196 pp.
29 Medición de la calidad de la educación: resultados. Vol. III. 1994, 92 pp.
30. Modelo de gestión GESEDUCA. 1994. 162 pp.
31. VI Reunión Técnica de REPLAD. Los desafíos de la descentralización, la calidad y el financiamiento
de la educación. 24 UNESCO. 1994. 100 pp.
32. Innovaciones en educación básica de adultos. Sistematización de 6 experiencias. UNESCO. 1995.
106 pp.
33. Los materiales de autoaprendizaje. Mario Kaplún. UNESCO. 1995. 166 pp.
UNESCO/UNICEF Series
4. La educación preescolar y básica en América Latina y el Caribe. 1993. 80 pp.
5. Pre-school and basic education in Latin America and the Caribbean. 1993. 80 pp.
6. Guías de aprendizaje para una escuela deseable. E. Schiefelbein, G. Castillo, V. Colbert. 1993. 120
pp.
7. Nuevas guías de aprendizaje para una escuela deseable. E. Schiefelbein, G. Castillo. 1993. 115 pp.
8. Guías de aprendizaje para iniciación a la lectoescritura. 1º y 2º grados. UNESCO/UNICEF. 162 pp.
“Resúmenes analíticos monotemáticos” Series
4. Factores determinantes del rendimiento y de la repetición. 1993. 116 pp.
5. Formación, perfeccionamiento y desempeño de los docentes de educación primaria y secundaria.
1994. 244 pp.
6. Valores en educación. 1994 168 pp.
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