Education and Development: Some Lessons from the LINS Experience

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Education and Development Some Lessons from the
LINS Experience

• Robert Smith
• Former Centre Leader,
• LINS, Oslo University College, Norway

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All you ever wanted to know about
education and development but were afraid to
ask.or What is LINS and why was it
created?What has LINS been doing for the past
10 years?What can be learned from the LINS
experience?
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• .and to draw out significant lessons from recent
  experience
• A brief diversion into theory as explanation,
• e.g
• Development Theory
• Post-development Theory
• Contingency Theory
• Ambiguity Theory
• Inconsistency Theory
• and Theory of Failure.

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The Rise of Official Development Aid

• Colonial origins (consider self interest)
• The rise of the notion of development
• Post WW 2 reconstructionism
• the UN agencies/the Bretton Woods institutions

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The Rise of Official Development Aid (cont.)

• Initial focus hardware/infrastructure
• The rise of the economists
• The rise of the bilaterals
• The dominance of the World Bank
• Post-development thinking

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NORAD starts to outsource

• Norads history of using external consultants
• Increasing focus on aid to education in the 1990s
• Assessment of the Norwegian environment by Jon
  Lauglo (1995/96)
• Competitive bids for the work from several
  institutions
• OUC/DECO awarded the contract LINS created

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• The early experience..
• Consultants and academicsa shotgun wedding?
• Expectations of the various actors
• Co-operating with Norwegian partners

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The early experience (cont.)

• Nature of the environment and the tasks
• LINS, NORAD and the Embassies
• The technologizing of development aid
• Learning to play with the big boys
• The LINS record from 1997..

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Education as a focus for development aid Job
Number One?

• Education seen purely as schooling?
• Broader visions of education ABEL
• Cultural concerns indigenous knowledge
• Contrasting paradigms rights versus human
  capital
• Aid as people/experts/advisors?

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Education as a focus for development aid Job
Number One?

• Shifting modalities - from projects to programs,
  baskets, budget support, HIPC, CF, FTI and debt
  relief/forgiveness
• Trying to make sure that what we do worksthe
  place of research, monitoring and evaluation
• Why is there always a gap between expectations
  and reality?

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Reflections on the Hour-glass Problem or why
things dont always go as planned..

• What filters down from the top and up from the
  bottom and if not, why not?
• The crises of ideology, understanding, commitment
  and capacity

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Reflections on the Hour-glass Problem or why
things dont always go as planned (cont.)

• What do we mean by analysis? Whose analysis and
  to what ends?
• The widening gap between the practitioner, the
  researcher, the policy maker and the donor

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What questions has the LINSexperience identified?

• Is development merely a practical challenge or is
  it more complex?
• Can theory guide us if so where do we find it
  and what will it look like?
• If we have 50 years of experience from
  development aid, why are we not better at it?
• How do we deal with a constantly changing
  landscape?

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Change? Who wants change? Things are bad enough
as they are.

• Changes in educational finance since Dakar 2000
  over 80 of educational finance in SSA comes from
  domestic sources
• Changes in aid modalities, especially budget
  support consequent decline in technical
  strength
• Changes in the donor community new funds, new
  modalities

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Change? Who wants change? Things are bad enough
as they are. (cont.)

• Shortening the development aid chain
• New challenges for countries and DPs ownership,
  national and regional capacity
• Paramount importance of properly functioning
  states to work with vampires and ruminants
  autocracy and democracy

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Some signs (rather than lessons or indicators..)

• Recipient responsibility as a critical factor
  need to improve countries knowledge of how
  funding works and how Governments can maintain
  ownership
• Make funding processes transparent
  (FTI/CF/ECF/EFA/ NETF/EPDF etc. etc)

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Some signs (rather than lessons or indicators..)
(cont.)

• Ensure that external funding focuses on technical
  support, knowledge generation, knowledge sharing
  not on policy and practice
• Channel ODA through as few agencies as possible
  (NB there are pros and cons.)
• Address the technical expertise gap using
  regional institutions/partnerships

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More signs and indicators

• Address the ideological gaps between countries
  and DPs whose notion of development is to
  dominate?
• Focus analysis more on context, context,
  context..building capacity on both sides

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More signs and indicators

• Holism rather than technicism
• Change seen as a two-way process, overcoming the
  asymmetry of aid
• Evaluate, evaluate, evaluate then apply the
  lessons

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A personal post-script

• LINS as a learning experience
• LINS as a repository of knowledge wisdom
• LINS as a collegial experience
• LINS as a commitment to helping poor people by
  getting their children into school
• LINS as essentially Norwegian in values, concept
  and practice

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Some key readings

• Allen T and Thomas A (2000) Poverty and
  Development, Milton Keynes, Open University
• Bignell V Fortune J (1984) Understanding
  Systems Failure, Manchester, Manchester
  University Press/Open University
• Breidlid A (2004) Sustainable Development,
  Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Education in
  South Africa, Journal of Teacher Education and
  Training, Vol 4, 2004
• Cassen R (1994) Does Aid Work? Oxford, Clarendon
  Press
• Chun, Wei Choo (2004) Information Management for
  the Intelligent Organization, http//choo.fis.utor
  onto.ca
• Earthscan (1998) The Reality of Aid, London,
  Earthscan
• Jones P (1992) World Bank Lending to Education,
  London, Routledge
• Morris P ( 1996) Asias Four Little Tigers a
  comparison of the role of education in their
  development, IJED, Vol 32, No1. pp 95-109
• Rahnema M and Bawtree V (1997) The
  Post-Development Reader, London, Zed Books
• World Bank (2000) Can Africa Claim the 21st
  Century?, Washington, World Bank