Global Education Policy Dashboard (GEPD)

What is the GEPD?

The Global Education Policy Dashboard is a tool to measure the key drivers of foundational learning. By tracking indicators that evidence has shown to be strongly associated with learning outcomes, the GEPD offers education stakeholders a comprehensive assessment of the key bottlenecks in their education systems. In doing so, the GEPD highlights where systems are falling short in providing quality education, identifies gaps between current practice and what evidence suggests would be most effective in promoting learning, and helps governments set priorities and track progress as they work to close those gaps.

The structure of the GEPD builds on the World Development Report (WDR) 2018 conceptual framework. By providing a holistic view of the entire primary education system, the GEPD offers a strong blueprint for a diagnostic of basic education. The tool is centered around the goal of improving foundational learning outcomes. Surrounding this central goal are the four main school-level drivers of learning: prepared learners, quality teaching, adequate inputs and infrastructure, and capable school management, captured through a set of practice indicators. The next set of indicators proxy for the (de jure and de facto) policies that affect each of these school-level indicators, and the final set captures the political context and bureaucratic capacity of the system. In total, over 30 indicators are reported as part of the GEPD.

The GEPD has been implemented in more than 20 education systems around the world since its launch in 2019. The GEPD data has informed multiple high-value products, including country partnership frameworks (Madagascar), Public Expenditure Reviews (Ethiopia), GPE country compacts (Sierra Leone), and country-level diagnostic reports (Edo State, Sierra Leone). Acknowledging the value of GEPD data, countries such as Ethiopia and Peru have implemented second rounds of the GEPD surveys to track progress over time.

Methodology

The GEPD collects data using three key instruments:

• The School Survey: Collects data on practices (service delivery in schools) and de facto policy indicators. This survey is carried out with a representative random national sample of schools and takes ~4 hours to complete per school. It includes eight core modules: School Information, Teacher Presence, Teacher Survey, Classroom Observation, Teacher Assessment, 1st-Grade Direct Assessment, School Management Survey, and 4th-Grade Student Assessment.
• The Policy Survey: Collects data related to de jure policy indicators through a legislative review that is completed by a key informant who works closely with/in the education sector and understands the country's education policy landscape. This captures policy information related to teachers, school management, inputs and infrastructure, and learners.
• The Survey of Public Officials: Collects information from education-related public officials at different levels about the capacity and orientation of the bureaucracy, as well as political factors affecting education outcomes. It includes questions related to technical and leadership skills, work environment, stakeholder engagement, impartial decision-making, and attitudes and behaviors.

The GEPD instruments draw on prior tools that have been used to measure the quality of education, such as the Service Delivery Indicators (SDI), the Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) Policy Intent, Global Early Child Development Database (GECDD, formerly MELQO), Development World Management Survey (DWMS), In-Service Teacher Training Instrument Survey (ITTSI), TEACH, and a Bureaucracy Lab survey.

There are various ways in which the data collection process and cost have been streamlined:

• Fewer questions: The dashboard does not attempt to be as comprehensive as existing instruments. For example, it uses only a small subset of the existing de jure SABER indicators, and the Survey of Public Officials is much shorter than the standard surveys.
• Fewer school visits: The survey team usually makes only one visit per school.
• Technological innovations: GEPD uses tablet-based data collection in schools, wherever possible.
• Lower training costs: The reduction in survey size and complexity, and the availability of centralized resources diminishes needed training, travel, and staff time.
• Flexibility: GEPD allows teams to easily add or remove optional modules, depending on their relevance to the local context (for example, climate change, school finance, etc.).

Country Results and Data

GEPD indicator data are available for countries around the globe. The indicator data can be accessed here:

• GEPD Indicators on the Development Data Hub

Resources

A range of tools are available to provide detailed information related to the GEPD.

• GEPD Implementation Brief: High-level overview of the GEPD instruments, and implementation steps
• GEPD Reference Guide: Detailed information about the instruments, data collection process, indicators and sub-indicators, outputs and FAQs
• GEPD Technical Note: Detailed information about the development of the instruments, indicators, sampling and indicator computation
• Instruments:
  • School Survey
  • Policy Survey
  • Survey of Public Officials