IMPROVING QUALITY EDUCATION IN LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN COUNTRIES BY USING A SOCIAL NORM PERSPECTIVE Anna Lucia D’Emilio TACRO

Advances in education -Near universal primary enrollment (93.5 %) and gender parity index. -Legal frameworks recognize the right to education, free primary education & often lower secondary education -Several governments recognize education as a public good ( non-excludable and not- rival)

Main problem: quality -Poor learning achievement -Very High repetition rates in the first grades (second only to Sub-Saharian Africa) -High drop-out rates -Large age/grade gaps

Student Enrolment (in 000s) and the Age-Grade Gap in Latin America and the Caribbean

Factual beliefs -Children who do not learn need to repeat. -Repetition as opportunity to learn -Repeat pre-school or start late if children are not “ready” for school -Poor learning achievement is attributed only to student -Age/grade gap is not an indicator of school failure. -Access and quality are separate issues -Exclusion from school vs. exclusion within school

“Así es pues”: the script -Both teachers and parents acceptance of repetition -Self-fulfilling prophecy CUSTOM or SOCIAL NORM? Factual beliefs not based on EE or NE Unconditional

The work so far… -Emphasis on socio-economic barriers -Little attention to pedagogical factor and social changes - -The Out of School Initiative & patnership -MoRES and social norms -The design of a communication strategy on education - Opportunities

- CREATING A SOCIAL NORM

Creation of a core group - Duty Bearers - Right holders Core groups High degree nodes network Bridges among network Criteria (among others) Duty bearers: teachers with positive results, teacher unions, parents, influential peoples Right holders : adolescents, celebrities they trust TRUST

Design a communication campaign OBJECTIVES -Make visible the problem & solutions -Common knowledge -Induce behavior change -Create new empirical expectation -Create a sense of embarrassment e.g. ARGUMENTs for “embarassing” collectivity Experiencial : the suffering of the children Scientific/Technical Economic The cost of school failure Do not BLAME CHILDREN & TEACHERS

The core values of the new norm  Education is every child’s right. Every child can learn.  Education is everybody’s responsibility. If a child fails, the whole education system and society are failing. -

Step by step -Public discussion and commitments -define the new behavior -See if legal norms clashes with the new norm -Define sanction - Public Monitoring and follow-up - Public Award and Celebration -

The way ahead -Define the scale and scope of the social changes from the regional office work -Identify gaps in knowledge -

MANY THANKS