Delivery Approaches in Education: Lessons from Ghana and Pakistan

February 1st, 2023
  • Date: Wednesday, 1st February 2023
  • Time: 05:00 pm to 07:00 pm
  • Venue: SOE 1, School of Education, LUMS
  • Speakers: Dr. Michael Boakye-Yiadom, Dr. Rabea Malik, Dr. Soufia Siddiqi, Dr. Faisal Bari

Driven by the global learning crisis, many countries are adopting approaches to help improve delivery and implementation of education reforms. One approach introduces delivery units and practices of data driven accountability and problem solving to national and sub-national bureaucracies, guided by centralized target setting and driven through the system by strong political ownership of reform at the top. More than 40 countries have undertaken such initiatives across a variety of sectors, including health, education and at the centre of government. Despite the global reach of delivery approaches, there are fewer than 10 peer-reviewed articles on their process of implementation and impact. This talk presents findings from two country cases part of a larger multi-country research study on delivery approaches, housed at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.

Ghana and Pakistan have adopted delivery approaches with intent to improve the quality of education service delivery. In Ghana a minister-led delivery unit was established in 2018 to coordinate national agencies to deliver ambitious education reform with a strong focus on accountability through performance contracts of sub-national bureaucrats. In 2012, the Chief Ministers Special Monitoring Unit was set up in Punjab to propel improvements in education and health service delivery at the district level. The Education Road Map reform in Punjab lasted for 8 years and is cited as one of the global examples of deploying delivery units and data driven accountability to improve services and outcomes. Presentations in this session will describe the structures, processes and practices that governments adopted in the two countries, and the ways in which these were implemented through and interacted with and impacted the bureaucratic practices of governance and service delivery.

Speakers

Dr. Michael Boakye-Yiadom, Director-General Institute for Educational Planning and Administration (IEPA), University of Cape Coast, Ghana.

Dr. Michael Boakye-Yiadom earned his Ph.D. in Higher Education Leadership from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, USA; and his Master of Educational Administration and Bachelor of Education degrees from the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. His research interests include international and contemporary issues in higher education and students affairs; diversity and inclusion in education; educational experiences of underrepresented populations; and school improvement. Dr. Boakye-Yiadom is passionate about cultivating culturally indigenous knowledge in education. In June 2022, The President of the Republic of Ghana appointed Dr. Boakye-Yiadom as the National Convenor for the Transforming Education Summit held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City from 16th to 20th September 2022.  Prior to joining the IEPA faculty, he served as Dean of Students at Hiwassee College in Madisonville, Tennessee, USA; Residential Coordinator at Ohio University; and senior staff at the University of Cape Coast.

Dr. Rabea Malik, CEO & Research Fellow, Institute of Development & Economic Alternatives

Dr. Rabea Malik is CEO and Fellow at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives (IDEAS), and Assistant Professor at the School of Education, LUMS (on leave). Rabea’s substantive interests lie in the areas of sociology of education and political economy of state sector reform in low-income country contexts. She has a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge, and more than ten years of experience of policy and academic research in Pakistan’s context. Rabea has led research projects on marketization of primary and secondary education, public private partnerships in education, school based management, inclusive education and effective teaching. She is the country co-PI in Pakistan for Teaching Effectively All Children, is the technical lead for the evaluation of the Punjab Education Sector Program II, and is part of the country team for Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE). Rabea has served as an advisor to the School Education Department, Punjab and to donors working in the education space in Punjab and Sindh. 

Dr. Faisal Bari – Dean, Syed Ahsan Ali & Syed Maratib Ali School of Education, LUMS & Senior Research Fellow IDEAS 

Dr. Faisal Bari is currently serving as the Dean of the LUMS School of Education and an Associate Professor on joint-appointment for Education and Economics. His research spans disability inclusion, gender representation in textbooks, the use of education technology for TPD, teacher politics and the political economy of teacher recruitment and retention, and the role of the private sector in education reform.

He is a member of the Higher Education Commission and has previously served as a Board Member for the Punjab Examination Commission. As member Punjab Examination Commission, he provided technical input in the reform of Punjab examination systems towards adoption of school based formative assessments. His work in education research and policy involves; leading performance evaluation work for DFID’s PESP II programme, collaborating with researchers from University of Cambridge to investigate how education can be made inclusive of diverse backgrounds, revising the Non-Salary budget for Public Schools in Punjab. His background work on social protection programs contributed to the development of the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP). He writes a bi-weekly column for a leading English daily DAWN.