Education Public Expenditure Reviews for Eastern and Southern Africa

Abstract

A sufficient number of education public expenditure reviews, quantitative service delivery surveys, and public expenditure tracking surveys had recently been completed for East and South African countries toexplore several questions. i) What topics did the PERs address?; ii) Could a comparative,regional database be created for the variables reviewed? iii) Were the data analyses appropriate,given the issues identified and the quality of the data?; iv) What did these analyses find?; v) Which were especially strong PERs and why?; vi) What did the assessment of these PERs imply about standards for good PERs that can guide practitioners?; vii) Were the findings of PERs used in policy dialogue with Governments?; viii) Are the Bank's taskteams using PER findings to shape the preparation of education projects? The conceptual framework for assessing the content coverage and analytic quality of PERs, QSDS, and PETS was based on the theoretical frameworks that underlie. The sample of PERs, PETS, and QSDS evaluated consisted of those recently completed forthe education sectors of Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Seychelles, Sudan,Zambia, and Zimbabwe. All were published between 2013 and 2016. Methods were developed to assess two basic questions: the document's content coverageand the quality of its data analysis. The methods used by the MFM and GGP PER stocktakingteam provided some guidance.Content analysis of each document was used to assess its content coverage, with thecontent analysis coding sheet being developed inductively from an analysis of a smallsample of PERs and modified as the coding proceeded. The final sheet had 11 domains,such as allocative and technical efficiency or equity of financing. PERs addressed multiple aspects of most domains, resulting in a total of 54 variables. Since the coding sheets were developed inductively, they could not show which domains were not covered by any ofthe PERs for any of the countries.The intent was to map the topics that PERs actually covered in order to determine two things: i) Whether topics fundamental to a PER--e.g., the equity of financing--were omitted or under-addressed; ii) Whether the PER's choices explicitly signaled an understanding ofthe theoretical context for PERs; The content coverage of the documents was evaluated in five ways: (i) Did the PERsassess all or only alimited set ofsub-sectors?; (ii) Did PERs all measure any core variables in the same way so that acomparative database couldbe created? (iii) What was the depth of coverage by country? This reveals the comprehensiveness and depth of coverage by country; (iv) What was the depth of coverage by domain? This reveals comprehensive versus skimpy coverage by domain; (v) What variables are not assessed or are underassessed? Chapters second and third present the main findings of the review of the East/South Africa PERs. Chapter second assesses coverage commonality, depth, omitted variables, and under-covered variables. Chapter third assesses data sources, data quality, the statistical methods used by the PERs, and the quality of their analyses. Chapter fourth focuses on the lessons learned from this review for improving the quality of education PERs. Chapter fifth highlights challenges that PER teams often face. Chapter sixth concludes with recommendations.