From the Ground Up: Improving Government Performance with Independent Monitoring Organizations

Chapter 5: Recommend solutions

77 Discerning problems is one thing. Solving them is quite another. Take an example from the previous chapter: analysts found that almost half the teachers in three Ghanaian school districts miss at least a day of school. But are those analysts in a position to develop a solution? Can they figure out what reforms will keep schools open and teachers teaching? And if so, can they convince the government to adopt them? Similar questions could be asked about each of the wide range of problems with the funding and provision of education and health services in developing countries presented in this book. Can independent monitoring organizations determine how supply and staff shortages could be lessened? How budgeting could be made more transparent? How local governments could realize more fully the opportunities that come from decentralizing healthcare or education? This chapter discusses independent monitoring organizations’ approaches to these “how” questions. The examples show that independent monitoring organizations can indeed use their analyses to develop ways to improve service delivery. Their skill at—and their vested interest in—delving deeply into the root causes of service delivery problems often help them develop manageable solutions to those problems. Many of the problems considered in this book seem simple to solve, but that simplicity is often deceptive. Take absenteeism. A knee-jerk reaction to discovering that teachers are being paid for classes that they are not teaching might be to stop paying these teachers. But in the Ghanaian example teachers were absent in part because they have to take long weekday trips to pick up their paychecks or to attend training workshops. In that case, rather than punishing teachers for missing class, Chapter 5 Recommend solutions 78 Chapter 5 the government might try paying teachers and scheduling workshops in ways that do not interfere with teaching. These steps may not solve the whole problem, but they may help, and they may do so simply and inexpensively. The four organizations in this chapter show that independent monitoring organizations often excel at developing such options. Their analysts are intimately familiar with the local context, with the forces responsible for the status quo, and with how those forces might be changed. And their work is directed at local providers or users of the service. There is a good chance that the analysts’ friends or families, or even the analysts themselves, are among the users of a service. This closeness helps them focus on practical steps that lead to short-term, tangible improvements. Center for Democratic Development, Ghana Two sets of recommendations in this chapter illustrate the ability of independent monitoring organizations to use their nuanced understanding of a problem to develop workable solutions. The first comes from Ghana, where almost half the teachers in three Ghanaian school districts missed at least one day of teaching during the week analysts from the Center for Democratic Development (CDD) visited schools (see chapter 4).1 CDD dug deeper into the causes of these absences and found that teachers miss class primarily because of illness, salary collection, funerals , and long-distance lectures. They appear to be less likely to miss class where there is an active parent–teacher association. CDD used these findings to develop suggestions for reducing absenteeism in Ghana’s schools. The recommendations would modify the factors correlated with teacher absenteeism and would strengthen supervision. Modifying the factors correlated with teacher absenteeism To address likely causes of teacher absenteeism, CDD made several recommendations , among them: Education authorities should adjust the schedule for long-distance educat
tion programs so that they do not require teachers to miss class on Fridays . While encouraging teachers to pursue higher education is laudable, the current schedule harms education quality by forcing teachers to skip school to travel to the lectures. Teachers should be paid at or near schools so that they do not have to travel t
to banks in district or regional capitals to collect their paychecks. The recently introduced electronic payment system in Ghana, the “e-zwich,” could improve the situation. Some teachers also suggested paying salaries on Saturdays, when teachers are not at work. Recommend solutions 79 Strengthening supervision To address the part of teacher absenteeism that is due to teachers simply deciding not to show up for work, CDD offered several more recommendations, among them: Education officials should actively encourage parent–teacher associations t
in every school. CDD’s study showed that an active parent–teacher...