Chapter

Understanding education quality

The goal of achieving universal primary education (UPE) has been on the
international agenda since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirmed, in
1948, that elementary education was to be made freely and compulsorily available
for all children in all nations. This objective was restated subsequently on many
occasions, by international treaties and in United Nations conference declarations. 1
Most of these declarations and commitments are silent about the qu ality of
education to be provided.

The achievement of universal participation in education will be fundamentally dependent upon the
quality of education available

Why focus on quality?

Although some of the international treaties, by specifying the need to provide education on
human rights, reproductive health, sports and gender awareness, touched on educational
quality,2 they were generally silent about how well education systems could and should be
expected to perform in meeting these objectives. This remained true as recently as 2000, when
the United Nations Millennium Declaration's commitment to achieve UPE by 2015 was directly
and simply set out without explicit reference to quality (see Box 1.1). Thus, in placing the
emphasis upon assuring access for all. these instruments mainly focused on the quantitative
aspects of education policy.
It seems highly likely, however, that the achievement of universal participation in education
will be fundamentally dependent upon the quality of education available. For example, how
well pupils are taught and how much they learn, can have a crucial impact on how long they stay
in school and how regularly they attend. Furthermore, whether parents send their
children to school at all is likely to depend on judgements they make about the quality of
teaching and learning provided - upon whether attending school is worth the time and cost for
their children and for themselves. The instrumental roles of schooling - helping individuals
achieve their own economic and social and cultural objectives and helping society to be better
protected, better served by its leaders and more equitable in important ways - will be
strengthened if education is of higher quality.3 Schooling helps children develop creatively and
emotionally and acquire the skills, knowledge, values and attitudes necessary for responsible,
active and productive citizenship. How well education achieves these outcomes is important to
those who use it. Accordingly, analysts and policy makers alike should also find the issue of
quality difficult to ignore.
More fundamentally, education is a set of processes and outcomes that are defined
qualitatively. The quantity of children who participate is by definition a secondary
consideration: merely filling spaces called schools' with children would not address even

The Dakar Framework for Action and Millennium Development Goals

EFA Dakar goals
1. Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged
children.

2. Ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities have
access to complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality.

3. Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life
skills programmes.

4. Achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and
continuing education for all adults.

5. Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005 and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with
a focus on ensuring girls' full and equal access to (and achievement in) basic education of good quality.

6. Improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes
are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills.
Millennium Development Goals
Goal 2. Achieve universal primary education Target 3. Ensure that by 2015 children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a
full course of primary schooling.
Goal 3. Promote gender equality and empower women
Target 4. Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and at all levels of education no later than 2015.

Education quality as defined in Jomtien and Dakar

In 1990, the World Declaration on Education for All noted that the generally poor quality of education needed to be improved and recommended
that education be made both universally available and more relevant. The Declaration also identified quality as a prerequisite for achieving the
fundamental goal of equity. While the notion of quality was not fully developed, it was recognized that expanding access alone would be
insufficient for education to contribute fully to the development of the individual and society. Emphasis was accordingly placed on assuring an
increase in children's cognitive development by improving the quality of their education.
A decade later, the Dakar Framework for Action declared that access to quality education was the right of every child. It affirmed that quality
was ‘at the heart ot education' - a fundamental determinant of enrolment, retention and achievement. Its expanded definition of quality set out
the desirable characteristics of learners (healthy, motivated students), processes (competent teachers using active pedagogies), content
(relevant curricula) and systems (good governance and equitable resource allocation). Although this established an agenda for achieving good
education quality, it did not ascribe any relative weighting to the various dimensions identified.

quantitative objectives if no real education occurred. Thus, the number of years of school is a
practically useful but conceptually dubious proxy for the processes that take place there and
the outcomes that result. In that sense, it could be judged unfortunate that the quantitative
aspects of education have become the main focus of attention in recent years for policy makers
(and many quantitatively inclined social scientists).
It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the two most recent United Nations international
conference declarations focusing on education gave some importance to its qualitative
dimension (Box 1.2). The Jomtien Declaration in 1990 and. more particularly, the Dakar
Framework for Action in 2000 recognized the quality of education as a prime determinant of
whether Education for All is achieved. More specifically than earlier pledges, the second of the
six goals set out in the Dakar Framework commits nations to the provision of primary education
of good quality' (Box 1.1). Moreover, the sixth goal includes commitments to improve all aspects
of education quality so that everyone can achieve better learning outcomes, especially in
literacy, numeracy and essential life skills'.
Notwithstanding the growing consensus about the need to provide access to education of good
quality', there is much less agreement about what the term actually means in practice/
Box 1.3 summarizes the evolution of UNESCO's understanding of education quality. This effort in
definition goes beyond the intrinsic and instrumental goals of education mentioned earlier. It
seeks to identify unambiguously the important attributes or qualities of education that can best
ensure that those goals are actually met. Similar formulations can be found in documents
produced by other international organizations and in the vast array of literature dealing with
the content and practice of education. Although the details differ, two key elements
characterize such approaches:
■ First, cognitive development is identified as a major explicit objective of all
education systems. The degree to which systems actually achieve this is one indicator of their
quality.
While this indicator can be measured relatively easily - at least within individual societies, if not
through international comparison - it is much more difficult to determine how to improve the
results. Thus, if quality is defined in terms of cognitive achievement, ways of securing increased
quality are neither straightforward nor universal.
■ The second element is education's role in encouraging learners' creative and
emotional development, in supporting objectives of peace, citizenship and security, in
promoting equality and in passing global and local cultural values down to future generations.
Many of these objectives are defined and approached in diverse ways around the world.
Compared“with cognitive development, the extent to which they are achieved is harder to
determine.

The evolution of UNESCO’s conceptualization of quality

One of UNESCO's first position statements on quality in education appeared in Learning to Be: The World of Education
Today and Tomorrow, the report of the International Commission on the Development of Education chaired by the
former French minister Edgar Faure. The commission identified the fundamental goal of social change as the
eradication of inequality and the establishment of an equitable democracy. Consequently, it reported, ‘the aim and
content of education must be recreated, to allow both for the new features of society and the new features of
democracy' (Faure et al., 1972: xxvi). The notions of 'lifelong learning' and 'relevance', it noted, were particularly
important. The Report strongly emphasized science and technology as well. Improving the quality of education, it
stated, would require systems in which the principles of scientific development and modernization could be learned
in ways that respected learners’ socio-cultural contexts.
More than two decades later came Learning: The Treasure Within, Report to UNESCO of the International Commission
on Education for the Twenty-first Century, chaired by another French statesman, Jacques Delors. This commission saw
education throughout life as based upon four pillars:
« Learning to know acknowledges that learners build their own knowledge daily, combining indigenous and 'external'
elements.
Learning to do focuses on the practical application of what is learned.
* Learning to live together addresses the critical skills for a life free from discrimination, where all
have equal opportunity to develop themselves, their families and their communities.
# Learning to be emphasizes the skills needed for individuals to develop their full potential.
This conceptualization of education provided an integrated and comprehensive view of learning and, therefore, of
whal: constitutes education quality (Delors et al., 1996).
The importance of good quality education was resolutely reaffirmed as a priority for UNESCO at a Ministerial Round
Table on Quality of Education, held in Paris in 2003.
UNESCO promotes access to good-quality education as a human right and supports a rights-based approach to all
educational activities (Pigozzi, 2004). Within this approach, learning is perceived to be affected at two levels. At the
level of the learner, education needs to seek out and acknowledge learners' prior knowledge, to recognize formal and
informal modes, to practise non-discrimination and to provide a safe and supportive learning environment.
At the level of the learning system, a support structure is needed to implement policies, enact legislation, distribute
resources and measure learning outcomes, so as to have the best possible impact on learning for all.

Quality for whom and what? Rights, equity and relevance

Although opinions about quality in education are by no means unified, at the level of
international debate and action three principles tend to be broadly shared. They can be
summarized as the need for more relevance, for greater equity of access and outcome
and for proper observance of individual rights. In much current international thinking,
these principles guide and inform educational content and processes and represent
more general social goals to which education itself should contribute.
Of these, the question of rights is at the apex. Although, as indicated earlier, most
human rights legislation focuses upon access to education and is comparatively silent
about its quality, the Convention on the Rights of the Child is an important exception. It
expresses strong, detailed commitments about the aims of
education. These commitments, in turn, have implications for the content and quality
of education. Box 1.4 summarizes the relevant sections.
The Convention takes the educational development of the individual as a central aim.
It indicates that education should allow chitdren to reach their fullest potential in terms
of cognitive, emotional and creative capacities.
The learner is at the centre of the educational experience, in a context also
characterized by respect for others and for the environment.
The Convention has important implications for both the content and the process of
education.
It implies that the learning experience should be not simply a means but also an end in
itself, having intrinsic worth. It suggests an approach to teaching (and the development
of textbooks and learning materials] that upholds the idea of a child-centred education,
using teaching

The aims of education, from the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 29 (1)
1. States Parties agree that the education of the child shall be directed to:

(a) The development of the child's personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential;

(b) The development of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and for the principles enshrined in the Charter
of the United Nations;

(c) The development of respect for the child's parents, his or her own cultural identity, language and values, for the national
values of the country in which the child is living, the country from which he or she may originate, and for civilizations different from his or her
own;

(d) The preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, eguality
of sexes, and friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin;

(e) The development of respect for the natural environment.

processes that promote - or at least do not undermine - children's rights. Corporal punishment is
deemed here to be a clear violation of these rights. Some dimensions of this 'rights-based
approach' to education is evident in the position adopted by UNICEF (Box 1.5).
Other international legislation, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, addresses the principle
of equity by stressing government s responsibility to ensure that all children have access to
education-of an acceptable quality. Brazil, Costa Rica and the Philippines provide three
examples of countries that have constitutional provisions guaranteeing a percentage of the
budget for education, in accordance with the International Covenant on
approach to quality
UNICEF strongly emphasizes what might be called desirable dimensions of quality, as
identified in the Dakar Framework. Its paper Defining Quality in Education recognizes five
dimensions of quality: learners, environments, content, processes and outcomes, founded
on ’the rights of the whole child, and all children, to survival, protection, development and
participation’ (UNICEF, 2000), Like the dimensions of education quality identified by
UNESCO (Pigozzi, 2004), those recognized by UNICEF draw on the philosophy of the
Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Economic. Social and Cultural Rights. Such legal safeguards permit stakeholders to hold
governments accountable for progressive realization of the right to education and for aspects of
its quality. (Wilson, 2004I
Where human rights legislation deals with education, its central concern is equity: the objective
of increasing equality in learning outcomes, access and retention. This ambition reflects a belief
that all children can develop basic cognitive skills, given the right learning environment. That
many who go to school fail to develop these skills is due in part to a deficiency in education
quality. Recent analyses confirm that poverty, rural residence and gender inequality persist as
the strongest inverse correlates of school attendance and performance (UNESCO, 2003a] and
that poor instruction is a significant source of this inequality. Quality and equity are inextricably
linked.
The notion of relevance has always attended debates about the quality of education. In the
past, and particularly in developing countries, imported or inherited curricula have often been
judged insufficiently sensitive to the local context and to learners’ socio-cultural
circumstances. The Convention on the Rights of the Child stresses a child-centred approach to
teaching and learning.5 This in turn emphazises the importance of curricula that as far as
possible respond to the needs and priorities of the learners, their families, and communities.
Relevance is also an issue for national policy.
With the acceleration of global economic integration, governments have become more
reoccupied with whether their education systems produce the skills necessary for economic growth in an
increasingly competitive environment. Increasing mobility has also brought concerns about the extent to
which learning, measured in terms of qualifications, is transferable. This has led to increased monitoring
and regulation of education systems and to a flourishing industry of cross-national learning assessment
using comparative benchmarks. Critics have voiced caution that such studies, such as those discussed in
Chapters 2 and 3 of this Report, may contribute to the standardization of cognitive skills informed by a set
of culturally exclusive principles and knowledge. Recent research has shown that even skills as basic as
literacy and numeracy can be conceived and taught in quite varied ways6 and thus run the risk of
misrepresentation by culturally insensitive assessment.
As with all aspects of development, a balance should be struck between ensuring the relevance of
education to the socio-cultural realities.of learners, to their aspirations, and to the wellbeing of the
nation.
Education traditions and associated notions of quality
When thinking about the quality of education it is useful to distinguish between educational outcomes
and the processes leading to them. People who seek particular, defined outcomes may rate quality in
those terms, ranking educational institutions according to the extent to which their graduates meet
’absolute' criteria concerning, for example, academic achievement, sporting prowess, musical success, or
pupil behaviour and values. The standard of comparison would be in some sense fixed, and separate from
the values, wishes and opinions of the learners themselves. 8 By contrast, relativist approaches emphasize
that the perceptions, experiences and needs of those involved in the learning experience mainly
determine its quality.9 Drawing on a business analogy, 'client orientation' in education puts strong
emphasis upon whether a programme fits its purposes in ways that reflect the needs of those who use it.
These different emphases have deep roots, and are reflected in major alternative traditions of
educational thought.

Humanist approaches

The ideas that human nature is essentially good, that individual behaviour is autonomous (within the
constraints of heredity and environment!, that everyone is unique, that all people are born equal and
subsequent inequality is a product of circumstance and that reality for each person is defined by himself
or herself characterize a range of liberal humanist philosophers from Locke to Rousseau.10 Such
principles, where accepted, have immediate relevance for educational practice. Learners, for humanists,
are at the centre of ‘meaning-making’, which implies a relativist interpretation of quality. Education,
strongly influenced by learner actions, is judged central to developing the potential of the child. 11
The notion that acquisition of knowledge and skills requires the active participation of individual learners
is a central link between humanism and constructivist learning theory.
The latter was influenced strongly by the work of John Dewey, who emphasized the ways in which people
learn how to construct their own meanings and to integrate theory and practice as a basis for social
action.12 Piaget (1971) was also influential in developing a more active’
Quality in the humanist
tradition
« Standardized, prescribed, externally defined or controlled curricula are rejected. They are seen as
undermining the possibilities for learners to construct their own meanings and for educational
programmes to remain responsive to individual learners' circumstances and needs.

• The role of assessment is to give learners information and feedback about the quality
of their individual learning. It is integral to the learning process. Seif -assessment and peer
assessment are welcomed as ways of developing deeper awareness of learning.

# The teacher's role is more that of facilitator than instructor.

* Social constructivism, while accepting these tenets, emphasizes learning as a process

of social practice rather than the result of individual intervention.

Quality in the behaviourist tradition

» Standardized, externally defined and controlled curricula, based on prescribed objectives and defined independently of the learner, are
endorsed.
© Assessment is seen as an objective measurement of learned behaviour against preset assessment criteria.
- Tests and examinations are considered central features of learning and the main means of planning and delivering rewards and punishments.
The teacher directs learning, as the expert who controls stimuli and responses.
% Incremental learning tasks that reinforce desired associations in the mind of the learner are favoured.

and participatory' role for children in their learning.13 More recently, social constructivism,
which regards learning as intrinsically a social - and, therefore, interactive - process, has
tended to supersede more conventional constructivist approaches.u Box 1.6 summarizes the
approach to education quality in the humanist tradition.
Behaviourist approaches
Behaviourist theory leads in the opposite direction to humanism. It is based on manipulation of
behaviour via specific stimuli.15 Behaviourism exerted a significant influence on educational
reform during the first half of the twentieth century (Blackman, 1995). Its main tenets were
that:
is Learners are not intrinsically motivated or able to construct meaning for themselves. m
Human behaviour can be predicted and controlled through reward and punishment.
« Cognition is based on the shaping of behaviour. ■ Deductive and didactic pedagogies, such as
graded tasks, rote learning and memorization, are helpful.16
Although few educationists accept the full behaviourist agenda in its pure form, elements of
behaviourist practice can be observed in many countries in teacher-training programmes,
curricula and the ways teachers actually operate in classrooms.17 Forms of direct or structured
instruction, which have an important place in this Report, share a key element with the
behaviourist tradition: the belief that learning achievement must be monitored and that
frequent feedback is crucial in motivating and guiding the learner. Box 1.7 summarizes the
behaviourist approach to education quality.

Critical approaches
Over the final quarter of the twentieth century, several important critiques of the precepts of
humanism and behaviourism emerged. Sociologists had already perceived society as a system of
interrelated parts, with order and stability maintained by commonly held values.13 Since-the
role of education is to transmit these values, quality in this approach would be measured by the
effectiveness of the processes of value transmission. In the latter part of the twentieth century,
critics began to acknowledge these processes as highly political. Some neo- Marxist approaches
characterized education in capitalist societies as the main mechanism for legitimizing and
reproducing social inequality.10 Others, in the new sociology of education' movement of the
1970s and 1980s, focused their critiques on the role of the curriculum as a social and political
means of transmitting power and knowledge.20 A separate group of critical writers, known as
the de-schoolers’, called for the abandonment of schooling in favour of more
community-organized forms of formal education.21 Other critiques of orthodox approaches
included various postmodern and feminist views.22
While the critical approaches encompass a vast array of philosophies, they share a concern that
education tends to reproduce the structures and inequalities of the wider society. Though many
retain the founding humanist principle that human development is the ultimate end of thought
and action, they question the belief that universal schooling will result automatically in equal
development of learners’ potential.
As a reaction against this, advocates of an ‘emancipatory pedagogy’ suggested that critical
intellectuals' should work to empower

Quality in the critical tradition

Critical theorists focus on inequality in access to and outcomes of education and on education’s role
in legitimizing and reproducing social structures through its transmission of a certain type of
knowledge that serves certain social groups. Accordingly, these sociologists and critical pedagogues
tend to equate good quality with:
® education that prompts social change;

* a curriculum and teaching methods that encourage critical analysis of social power relations
and of ways in which formal knowledge is produced and transmitted;

* active participation by learners in the design of their own learning experience.

marginalized students by helping them analyse their experience - and thus redress social
inequality and injustice. Critical pedagogy, in this view, is emancipatory in the sense that it lets
students find their own voices (Freire. 1985!, frees them from externally defined needs (Giroux,
1993) and helps them to explore alternative ways of thinking that may have been buried under
dominant norms [McLaren, 1994). Box 1.8 outlines the key features of the critical approaches as
regards education quality.
Indigenous approaches
Some important efforts to develop alternative educational ideas are rooted in the realities of
lower-income countries and have often arisen as challenges to the legacies of colonialism.
Prominent examples include the approaches of Mahatma Gandhi and Julius Nyerere. both

of whom proposed new and alternative education systems with culturally relevant emphases on
self-reliance, equity and rural employment.23
Such indigenous approaches challenged the imported’ knowledge, images, ideas, vatues and
beliefs reflected in mainstream curricula. A positive example of the alternatives offered, in
curriculum terms, is in the field of mathematics. ‘Ethno-mathematicians’ claim that ‘standard’
mathematics is neither neutral nor objective, but culturally biaised and that alternative forms
exist that have implications for teaching and learning.24 Sox 1.9 presents some important
features common to indigenous approaches.
Adult education approaches
Adult education is frequently ignored in debates about education quality, but it has its share of
behaviourist, humanist and critical approaches (see Box 1.10]. Some writers, with roots in
humanism and constructivism, emphasize the experience of adults as a central learning
Quality in adult education approaches
In the adult education tradition, experience and critical reflection in learning is an important
aspect of quality. Radical theorists see learners as sociall y situated, with the potential to use
their experience and learning as a basis for social action and social change.

Quality in the indigenous tradition

Challenging dominant Northern ideas about the quality of education, indigenous approaches reassert the
importance of education's relevance to the socio -cultural circumstances of the nation and learner.
The following principles are implied:
• Mainstream approaches imported from Europe are not necessarily relevant in very different social and
economic circumstances.

® Assuring relevance implies local design of curriculum content, pedagogies and assessment.
« All learners have rich sources of prior knowledge, accumulated through a variety of experiences, which
educators should draw out and nourish.
Learners should play a role in defining their own curriculum.
$ Learning should move beyond the boundaries of the classroom/school through non -formal and lifelong learning
activities.

resource.25 Others see adult education as an essential part of socio-cultural, political and
historical transformation.26 The latter view is most famously associated with literacy
programmes and with the work of the radical theorist Paulo Freire, for whom education was an
intensely important mechanism for awakening political awareness.27 His work urges adult
educators not only to engage learners in dialogue, to name oppressive experiences, but also,
through 'problem posing' and conscientization, to realize the extent to which they themselves
have been influenced by repressive societal forces.
A framework for understanding, monitoring and improving
education guality
Given the diversity of understanding and interpretation of quality evident in the different
traditions discussed above, defining quality and developing approaches to monitoring and
improving it requires dialogue designed to achieve:
■ broad agreement about the aims and objectives of education;
a a framework for the analysis of quality that enables its various dimensions to be specified; a an
approach to measurement that enables the important variables to be identified and assessed;
■ a framework for improvement that comprehensively covers the interrelated
components of the education system and allows opportunities for change and reform to be
identified.
As earlier sections of this chapter have indicated, cognitive development and the accumulation
of particular values, attitudes and skills are important objectives of education systems in most
societies. Their content may differ but their broad structure is similar throughout the world.
This may suggest that in one sense the key to improving the quality of education - to helping
education systems better achieve these objectives - coutd be equally universal. Considerable
research has been directed towards this question in recent years. As Chapter 2 shows, however,
the number of factors that can affect educational outcomes is so vast
that straightforward relationships between the conditions of education and its products are not
easy to determine.
Nevertheless, it helps to begin by thinking about the main elements of education systems and
how they interact. To this end, we might characterize the central dimensions influencing the
core processes of teaching and learning as follows:
■ learner characteristics dimension;

■ contextual dimension;
s enabling inputs dimension;
» teaching and learning dimension.
* outcomes dimension.
Figure 1.1 illustrates these dimensions and their relationships, and the following subsections
discuss their characteristics and interactions.
Learner characteristics
How people learn - and how quickly - is strongly influenced by their capacities and experience.
Assessments of the quality of education outputs that ignore initial differences among learners
are likely to be misleading. Important determining characteristics can include socio-economic
background, health, place of residence, cultural and religious background and the amount and
nature of prior learning. It is therefore important that potential inequalities among students,
deriving from gender, disability, race and ethnicity. HIV/AIDS status and situations of
emergency are recognized. These differences in learner characteristics often require special
responses if quality is to be improved.
Context
Links between education and society are strong, and each influences the other. Education can
help change society by improving and strengthening skills, values, communications, mobility
(link with personal opportunity and prosperity], personal prosperity and freedom.
In the short term, however, education usually reflects society rather strongly: the values and
attitudes that inform it are those of society at large. Equally important is whether education
takes place in the context of an affluent society or one where poverty is widespread. In the
latter case, opportunities to increase resources for education are likely to be constrained.

Figure 1.1: A framework for

understanding education quality
Enabling Inputs
Teaching and learning
Learning time
Learner Teaching methods Outcomes
Assessment, feedback, incentives
characteristics Class size Literacy, numeracy
; -s Aptitude and life skills
1 Ü Perseverance ■ M Teaching and learning materials Creative and
i m School readiness *s Physical infrastructure and facilities emotional skills
) m. Prior knowledge Human resources: teachers, principals. Values
: 9t Barriers inspectors, supervisors, administrators Social benefits
to learning School governance
t Context
?r Economic and labour Educational knowledge Philosophical National standards
standpoint
market conditions in and support infrastructure of teacher Public expectations
and learner
the community Public resources available Peer effects Labour market demands
Socio-cultural and religious for Globalization
education Parental support
factors Competitiveness of Time available for
{Aid strategies) the teaching profession schooling and
homework on the labour market
National governance and management
strategies

More directly, national policies for education also provide an influential context. For example,
goals and standards, curricula and teacher policies set the enabling conditions within which
educational practice occurs. These contextual circumstances have an important potential
influence upon education quality. International aid strategies are also influential in most
developing countries.
Enabling inputs
Other things being equal, the success of teaching and learning is likely to be strongly influenced
by the resources made available to support the process and the direct ways in which these
resources are managed. It is obvious that schools without teachers, textbooks or learning
materials will not be able to do an effective job In that sense, resources are important for
education quality - although how and to what extent this is so has not yet been fully
determined. Inputs are enabling in that they underpin and are intrinsically interrelated to
teaching and learning processes, which in turn affects the range and the type of inputs used and
how effectively they are employed. The main input variables are material and human resources,
with the governance of these resources as an important additional dimension:
a Material resources, provided both by governments and households, include textbooks and
other learning materials and the availability of classrooms, libraries, school facilities and other
infrastructure.
Human resource inputs include managers, administrators, other support staff, supervisors,
inspectors and, most importantly, teachers. Teachers are vital to the education process.
They are both affected by the macro context in which it takes place and central to its successful
outcomes. Useful proxies here are pupil/teacher ratio, average teacher salaries and the
proportion of education spending allocated to various items. Material and human resources
together are often measured by expenditure indicators, including
public current expenditure per pupil and the proportion of GDP spent on education.
■ Enabling school-level governance concerns the ways in which the school is organized and
managed. Examples of potentially important factors having an indirect impact on teaching and
learning are strong leadership, a safe and welcoming school environment, good community
involvement and incentives for achieving good results.
Teaching and learning
As Figure 1.1 indicates, the teaching and learning process is closely nested within the support
system of inputs and other contextual factors. Teaching and learning is the key arena for human
development and change. It is here that the impact of curricula is felt, that teacher methods
work well or not and that learners are motivated to participate and learn how to learn. While
the indirect enabling inputs discussed above are closely related to this dimension, the actual
teaching and learning processes (as these occur in the classroom) include student time spent
learning, assessment methods for monitoring student progress, styles of teaching, the language
of instruction and classroom organization strategies.
Outcomes
The outcomes of education should be assessed in the context of its agreed objectives. They are
most easily expressed in terms of academic achievement (sometimes as test grades, but more
usually and popularly in terms of examination performance], though ways of assessing creative
and emotional development as well as changes in values, attitudes and behaviour have also
been devised. Other proxies for learner achievement and for broader social or economic gains
can be used; an example is labour market success. It is useful to distinguish between
achievement, attainment and other outcome measures - which can include broader benefits to
society.

Using the framework

This framework provides a means of organizing and understanding the different variables of
education quality. The framework is comprehensive, in that the quality of education is seen as
encompassing access, teaching and learning processes and outcomes in ways that are influenced
both by context and by the range and quality of inputs available. It should be remembered that
agreement about the objectives and aims of education will frame any discussion of quality and
that such agreement embodies moral, political and epistemological issues that are frequently
invisible or ignored.
While the framework is by no means the only one available or possible, it does provide a broad
structure which can be used for the dual purposes of monitoring education quality and analysing
policy choices for its improvement.
In Chapters 2 and 3 of this Report, the determinants of education quality are analysed according
to the extent to which variables from different dimensions result in improved learning outcomes
(measured primarily in terms of cognitive achievement!. Chapter 4 then adapts and modifies
the framework to facilitate a more holistic discussion of policy strategies for the improvement
of education quality. It focuses on the central teaching and learning dimension of Figure 1.1,
placing the learner at the core.
The structure of the Report
The primary purpose of the EFA Global Monitoring Report is to monitor changes in education
around the world in the light of the Dakar goals. As in the earlier volumes, a substantial amount
of attention is given (particularly in Chapter 3) to analysing progress towards the goals - mainly
in a quantitative sense. In taking the quality of education as its theme and thus focusing
attention particularly upon progress and prospects for achieving the sixth Dakar goal, the
Report has already illustrated the importance of education quality to EFA and addressed
questions of how it can be defined and monitored (Chapter 1|. It now goes on to identify what
factors particularly affect education quality (Chapter 2|. what strategies for improvement can
be adopted, particularly by developing countries28 (Chapter L\ and how the international
community is meeting its international commitments to EFA (Chapter 5!.