Round Table | Accountability in Education: The Role of Citizens in Accelerating Learning for All

You can also watch it on World Bank Live webpage

The hashtag for promoting the event is #SocialAcc

Round Table Participants:

Chair: Debbie Wetzel
Senior Director, Governance Global Practice

Keynote: Dan Stoner

Co-Chair of the Basic Education Coalition

Vice President for Education and Child Protection at Save the Children US

Omar Arias

Manager for Global Knowledge & Innovation, Education Global Practice

Alice Albright

CEO Global Partnership for Education

GPSA Steering Committee Members

The World Bank’s Global Partnership for Social Accountability’s (GPSA) portfolio has a set of projects where promising examples of civil society, governments and other stakeholders use collaborative social accountability to improve education around the world.

The last 50 years have generated high hopes of great schooling expansion, but much remains to be done. As countries have committed to ensuring inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning (Sustainable Development Goal 4), the World Development Report 2018 (WDR 2018) – LEARNING to Realize Education’s Promise – warns that there is a “learning crisis”. It identifies three policy actions to accelerate learning for all: assess learning to make it a serious goal; act on evidence to make schools work for learners; align actors, to make the system work for learning. Citizen-driven data, community engagement and accountability, and multi-stakeholder coalitions can support the implementation of these actions.

In addition, the 2017/18 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Second Report analyzes how accountability processes can contribute towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goal on education. The report, as the WDR 2018, underscores that everyone has a role in improving education – “civil society support can be crucial”. Moreover, the 2004 WDR on Making Services for the Poor galvanized global efforts to strengthen citizen-driven accountability processes in order to improve delivery and responsiveness of services, while the 2017 WDR on Governance and the Law advocates citizen engagement in the policy process.

The GPSA works with over 50 governments and more than 260 civil society and private sector partners towards solving governance challenges around the world. Discussants and members of the GPSA’s Steering Committee will discuss the contribution that collaborative social accountability can make in the education sector in general and specifically towards addressing the learning crisis.

Read the roundtable blogpost written by Jeff Thindwa, Program Manager for the GPSA.

Read more takeaways from the roundtable in the event report.

GPSA Projects in Education:

• 2013 Moldova - "My School" Project: Improving the Quality of Education from Primary to Upper Secondary Schools 
• 2013 Malawi - Reducing Teacher Absenteeism and Increasing Transparency in the Delivery of Educational Materials
• 2013 Malawi - Increasing Transparency in the Delivery of Educational Materials
• 2013 Dominican Republic - Good Governance Practices for the Dominican Republic Project
• 2013 Philippines - Guarding the Integrity of the Conditional Cash Transfer Program for the Philippines
• 2014 Mongolia - Improving Access to Education and Performance in Mongolia
• 2014 Morocco - Improving Access and Quality of Primary School Education in Morocco
• 2014 Paraguay - Tekopora Beneficiaries Empowered to Ensure Social Acountability Project
• 2016 Georgia - Improved Social Accountability for Bettering Preschool Quality
• 2016 Mauritania - Transparency Of the Mauritanian Education Budget, TOME

Previous Steering Committee Round Tables:

• February 23, 2017 - Engaging Civil Society in Situations of Fragility, Conflict and Violence

• January 28, 2016 - Sustainable Development Goals: Keeping Citizens at the Center