52 - Education Accounts: Do Spending Trends Follow Political Rhetoric

Abstract Information: Use of evidence-based plans and policy reforms is gaining increasing importance in resource-constrained low-income countries seeking to maximize the impact of scarce resources to education. Evaluating expenditures against the political goals and promises can help discern whether the expenditures follow the ambitions of the government or continue with historical patterns. While broad estimates and numbers are routinely collected by most national ministries and state departments of education, the lack of accuracy and reliability as well as the obtuse nature of recording and presentation of the data does not facilitate serious policy use. A major advance in this area has been brought about by the development of National Education Accounts (NEAs), which is a new tool for systematically measuring and organizing education expenditures in a policy-friendly manner. While not an auditing tool, NEAs tell the story of expenditures and provide real-time information on the flow of funds within the education sector – both of which significantly strengthen evidence-based decision-making and contribute to strategic changes in discretionary spending to maximize impact over time.

Relevance Statement: The theme of this conference is storytelling – specifically, how storytelling contributes to and shapes the narrative of evaluations, and how often-times the story leads to an evaluation. This paper explores ways in which the otherwise drab world of expenditure data tells the story of improvements or lack thereof resulting from political will and rhetoric – and introduces a new tool for strategic evaluation of spending in the education sector. National Education Accounts (NEA), as this approach is called, organizes spending at national or regional levels according to a sources-to-uses framework that helps identify areas of under- and over-spending and provides hard evidence to policy makers for making strategic changes in flow of funds to maximize impact. While not an auditing tool, data organized according to the NEA framework provides a ready basis for governments, civil society organizations and other stakeholders to suggest relatively small modifications in flow of funds to achieve large gains in equity and quality of education.