A new model of financing, which provides the balance of payments once progress is achieved, is making headway in Tanzania, providing a benchmark for other programmes to follow.
Challenge
For Tanzania’s young and fast-growing population, spread across a vast land mass, the challenge of meeting the practical demands of educating the next generations will prove critical in helping the country to meet its aim of becoming a middle-income country by 2025. More money for teacher training, school equipment and infrastructure is only part of the solution. In common with many developing education systems, the need to strengthen ministries’ capacity and incentivise targeted action will provide the foundations for any long-term change and improvement.
Approach
Education PforR (Programme for Results) is an innovative, results-based financing programme supported by the World Bank, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), and the Government of Sweden (SIDA), which is making US$437 million available to the Government of Tanzania to improve quality, equity and access in the public education system.
The programme is one of the first of its kind and is designed to incentivise improvement, rather than guarantee money up front. The government may claim funds on a six-monthly and annual basis from the World Bank, FCDO and SIDA, depending upon the progress they have made against a set of clearly defined results and deliverables related to the education sector. This approach is intended to strengthen ownership of the system by providing flexibility in the use of funds, so they can be directed at areas within the education sector that are identified by the government as being of greatest need. This ownership and focus aims to secure more sustainable change.
Building on the momentum from the Big Results Now! programme, EP4R encourages the government to directly flow money from the ministry of finance directly to schools. Previously, without any predictability around funding, head teachers had no control around budget or preparation. These direct payments have opened up clearer levels of communication that didn’t exist before. Now, over 20,000 schools are able to make plans for the future with a degree of certainty.
Progress
The country’s rapid acceleration in reading speed provides a solid example of how the EPforR system works. The government needed to improve reading skills of all children by an average of one word per minute, to receive all of the allocated funds. From a baseline of 18.3, schools nationwide were able to record rates of 23 words per minute, in just a couple of years, representing a big improvement.
We also helped to reform the school quality assurance department, so that all schools create a summary report card that provides community with information on how their school is faring. This included a self-evaluation form for every school that acted as a diagnostic tool.
Another result was the backlog clearing of $18m worth of teacher claims, such as travel expenses, overtime and payments for taking on new duties. This proved important for strengthening morale among teachers.
More recently, funds have been directed into classroom construction, to meet the growing population. Tanzania faces a growing school-age population in coming years, so more infrastructure needs built where those children live.
A series of workshops throughout the country gives the ministry the opportunity to see and brief every district and regional education officer over a two-week period, which they wouldn’t achieve otherwise.