“Strengthening Communication for

Development Towards Improved Results in

Education”

Communication for Development (C4D)

WCARO C4D Network MeetingKerida McDonald Senior AdvisorCommunication for Development, NYHQ

15 Participating countries from 6 Regions

Expected Outcomes

1) Inclusive Education

Types of Marginalization : Disabilities, Gender, Socio-cultural, Geographical/Transience

2) Quality Education

3) Accountability – increased demand for quality

4) Capacity

Expected OutcomesImproved Quality:

Demand, Accountability & Capacity1) Inclusive Education2) Quality Education: Improved Quality to support Learning Outcomes

3) Accountability

Opportunities for Parents/Communities to participate in accountability mechanisms that provide feedback to school, education sector and local government personnel 4) Capacity

Increased capacities of Education Sector, government and NGO actors to design, implement, monitor and evaluate Communication for Development strategies

Examples of Literature Review Findings

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENTBring out local perspectives and raise awareness

• Migrant children and families • Strengthen accountability of education

systemImpact of community scorecard and social audit

research (Malawi)• Cultivate social capital and inclusive

education (Zanzibar)MASS MEDIA• Strengthen self-efficacy among teachers in Cape Town (Kim 2011).

• Support professional development in Cameroon (Lumadi and Kibinkiri 2013).

• Reach nomadic populations with educational programs in Nigeria.• Participatory video to empower teachers on inclusive education

matters and priorities in policy-making (Mitchell, De Lange, Nguyen, Thuy 2008).

• Community participation to affect child marriage and decisions about girls’ education (Erulka and Muthengi 2009 on Ethiopia.

Key Highlights of LESSONS LEARNED from COs

• Simple KAP is not sufficient to uncover complex issues related to social norms.• Differentiation – sub-groups within Marginalized groups

• Need greater focus on incorporating in-depth consultation with marginalized groups and input of their views and suggestions in design of interventions.

• Help parents, adolescents, communities to vision what they want from an education system and how to demand it.

• ‘interactive feedback loop’ where you and the community are constantly exchanging ideas and information via a wide range of different monitoring processes.

• Need to use C4D to show the parents the small victories so that they can experience success

• Need to embed efforts at teacher attitudes within Teacher Training programmes

• Need to pay closer attention to production of communication material in the multiple local languages using local residents.

Particular Emphasis on Exploiting the Use of IT

• Use of SMS for information updates for parents through radio, email etc.SMS-based feedback with questions, complaints (logged for follow-up), voice messages on phones to the community members, client satisfaction surveys (on quality of teaching, teacher attendance). Data informed awareness, advocacy and action.

the awareness raising step like, letting people know what are their rights, informing them of obligations. Can have them ask questions via SMS, service providers can reply with the answer or direct them to the services which can give them the right answers. The client satisfaction surveys can be structured twice a year to update any problems. This can be done via community dialogs, drama shows, radio etc.

• Supports message repetition, information-on-request

• Can support organisational capacity strengthening, reduced dependancy on 3rd parties for information campaigns and information-based activities

Lessons learned from ICTs for C4D in Education

Emergent approach: testing assumptions - learning by doing versus evidence-informed planning, participatory & locus of choice with implementing actors – process as capacity building and local resource creation.

ICT support becomes most transformative where organizational culture is open to emergent programming (observe & adapt, observe & adapt)

Challenge of legitimizing the provided data with the local, national government. Importance of involving central and local authorities in the data collection. data over a period of time then you can see the frequent occurring of the data or the regularity

For UNICEF, need to align with investments made and partnerships already developed, and the institutional accountabilities in the innovation unit.

Recommendations based on Mapping Results

• Do an Equity audit of C4D in Education – mapping showed that some Marginalized groups which experience the highest level of exclusion are receiving the lowest level C4D support ie 1) Disabilities 2) migrant/Refugees 3) Rural , 4) Pastoralist groups

• Identify Areas of missed opportunity for C4D engagement - Areas with greatest gap between # of countries reporting as significant barrier and C4D support Eg.

Student related factors - Perception of schools not being relevant Teacher-school environment - Poor student-teacher relationship Parent-Community-Public - Low social value for teachers Institutional factors - insufficient representation of Marginalized

groups in planning - Absence of mechanism for C4D planning at Local

Governance level

• Need to engage at higher more strategic levels - Very few reported C4D mainstreaming in core sector mechanisms eg . SWAP, Budgets, EMIS

• Greater advocacy and support required to apply C4D Programming Cycle – only ½ countries have undertaken behavioural analysis, more have supported strategy development. Only 2-3 countries have supported MoRES, impact evaluation

• Attempt to diversify use of C4D platforms - Most commonly supported platforms: Community Dialog, School Clubs, Community Theatre - few countries reported supporting use of radio programmes, TV programmes and mobile phones

Key Recommended Partners

Implementing Partners

• BRAC International where there is presence in-country (ie. Nigeria)

• At country level – Need to expand range of implementation partners: In order to expand work in C4D in Education need to think broadly beyond Ministry of Education. Eg. Tajikistan Partnership with the Committee of Youth, Sports and Tourism to engage young people to become agents of change and support creation of a social movement for Girls’ Education.

• Organizations supporting marginalized Groups – Eg. Disability organizations.

Technical Partners• IICD – One of the earliest ICT-for-Development organisations. Based in the

Netherlands. Main focus on engagement, capacity development and sustainability. Support design solutions that facilitate participatory collection & discussion of monitoring data. Eg. District Citizen Monitoring Teams that play on-going watch dog function.

• Equal Access - C4D INGO, Equal Access based in San Francisco, California has established a range of long and short term projects around the world that promote change through various media formats. Strong in M & E.

MAIN PARTNERS SUPPORTING C4D in Education

BILATERALSa) JICA (Bangladesh; Malawi)b) DFID (Malawi)

c) World Bank (Vietnam) d) Norway, Korea, Denmark, France, Japan, Irish Aid USAID

FOUNDATION / PRIVATE SECTOR

MasterCard, Marks & Spencer, Multi-Choice, H & M

IN-COUNTRY ACADEMIC PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS

Dhaka University (Bangladesh) Makerere University, MasterCard Foundation partner universities (Uganda BRAC) Vietnamese Institute of Educational Science

C4D in EDUCATION COMMUNIQUE

SOME OF THE KEY PRINCIPLES & STANDARDS

• Systematic Integration of C4D within programming in the Education Sector

• Invest in generating evidence with deeper diagnosis of the behavioural and social drivers of education inclusion and quality

• Focus on Positive /Appreciative enquiry ….not only focus on barriers and

challenges

• Strengthen community-led approaches

• Differentiation between C4D and Communication

• Special emphasis on innovation, experimentation, adaptation and documentation