Shaping Global Education Policies with Ministries and Governments | Book Essay

Essay Contributor to One Student at a Time: Leading the Global Education Movement | 2017 | External Link

Goals and Work

One of the main goals I have adopted since working at the World Bank is to ensure that the policies created in education are producing the outcomes we want. I currently work in the Educational Global Practice at the World Bank, more particularly in the Global Engagement and Knowledge team (we call ourselves GEAK). The GEAK team at the World Bank focuses on working across all the regions at the World Bank, through providing key research and different themes in education to our partner countries. Our aim is to do work that is relevant for policy and practice, and will be key in enabling the World Bank to meet its Education For All 2020 strategy.

All of our work is done in conjunction with countries’ governments, so our teams always engages with the Education Ministries of the countries we work in, which is quite exciting. The potential for scale is enormous, as we usually support the government in designing and implementing system-wide policy changes.

What this research tangibly looks like, however, varies from country-to-country, but I will give two examples. First, a project I am currently working on is in Lao PDR. This project is focused on looking at how the education ministry, and more generally, the Government of Lao PDR, is delivering public education. We conducted an in-depth quantitative survey with dozens of indicators, gathering information on school facilities, teacher background and knowledge, school leadership, community participation in education, and many more.

This analysis was conducted as the first step in a three-year project the Government of Lao PDR is working on with the Global Partnership for Education, trying to improve the access to and quality of education in the whole country.

Second, another project I just finished working on was in the West African country of Guinea-Bissau. There, the focus was on improving school-based management practices, and how the government can work to improve on currently existing policies. Using qualitative methods, we conducted an analysis to see what the School Autonomy and Accountability policies in place were, and provided recommendations to the government about what areas to improve in order to have better school management.

The work I do focuses on ensuring that the high-level education systems are making the best possible choices for improving and advancing educational access, quality and equity, and working with the ministries of education in various countries in order to do so.

Impact

It is hard to estimate my impact given that the World Bank works with so many countries, and with the education ministries. Usually, when we have an engagement, the policies are being recommended for the entire student population of that country, or with a focus on primary or secondary education. Giving an estimate to say thousands of children have been affected by my work alone, would be unfair to say. We all work on teams and with teams that support us. Since I am not based in schools or directly have learners I work with, all my work indirectly affects students in the countries we work with. However, we do know that thousands, if not millions of children, are affected by the policies that the government eventually creates, which are in part aided by the advice of the World Bank.

Challenges

Given the nature of my role, which involves a lot of counterparts and stakeholders, there is always a certain amount of unpredictability. The challenges faced are not necessarily milestones that you can see, but rather what you do not see. There are times when projects have to be dropped – that have possibly been worked on for years – because governments change, or priorities change.

Further, I think management of time and resources is also challenging. Almost everything I work on at the World Bank has a big “ASAP” deadline stamped on it. Prioritizing and understanding how to manage multiple deadlines, as well as timelines that governments and other teams have is important. There are many pieces that need to fit together to get the work done.

Lessons Learned

The main thing I learned was to remember constantly that the reason we are all in this work is for children. This is why I started working in education, and have dedicated my life to it. Working at a big bureaucratic organization will sometimes make you forget that. There is a lot of red tape around the work we do, and moreover, even my own professional development and type of contract. Centering yourself, taking a deep breath, and remembering the mission behind all this work puts me in the right mindset to approach work.

There are some more practical approaches I now use, as well. First, I learned that it is just as important to have a ‘balcony view’ as it is to have a ‘dancefloor view.’ Getting caught up in technical details is good, but only if you are able to keep the big picture of the project in mind. Second, but connected to the first, is a tool that I came to learn from teachers that I worked with in my previous role at Teach For Pakistan, which came from the Teach For All teaching as a leadership model: backwards planning. While many teachers would say this works well with setting goals for your students over the year, I truly believe it can come into use in any professional or personal setting. Ensuring that you set a long-term goal, and have short terms that lead up to it, greatly helps with organization and planning, whether you are trying to enhance a project, or your own career and professional development.

Bio

Myra M. Khan is an international education specialist with 6 years’ experience that spans over South Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, West Africa, Eastern Europe and South East Asia. She currently consults for the World Bank on education in numerous countries including Lao PDR, Guinea Bissau, Kosovo, Serbia, Libya, and the Philippines over various education themes. Myra completed her Ed. M. in International Education Policy in 2015 from HGSE, and holds a B.A. Hons. In Politics, Philosophy and Economics. Prior to that, she worked at Teach For Pakistan where she supported the CEO on a number of projects from business development to strategic planning.