Government Decisionmaking on Education in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Understanding the Fit among Innovation, Scaling Strategy, and Broader Environment

Only a few innovations ever successfully scale throughout education systems. Previous research highlights two reasons for this scarcity of success stories: either the innovations are badly designed, or the environment is not conducive to accepting and absorbing the education innovations. Even the best innovations with the most strategic scaling plans can underestimate the power held by the broader environment over scaling success. The research that informs this report found that government decisions about scaling education innovations are not primarily about the merits or impact of the specific model being considered. Rather, a series of "factors external to the innovation" influence decisionmaking about whether the innovation should be adopted and whether it can scale. We might call this "the power of the broader environment." For this report, the authors have organized the many factors of the power of the broader environment on decisionmaking into five dimensions: (1) National politics; (2) Donor priorities; (3) Education transfer and contextualization; (4) Education technology; and (5) Absence of meaningful data. This report explores how the identified factors shape decisionmaking and considers what this means for scaling teams hoping to institutionalize their innovations into public education systems or expand the innovations' impacts in new ways. The report concludes with recommendations for scaling teams, donor representatives, government decisionmakers, and others about how to understand and make productive use of these factors and more strategically harness the larger system within which it operates.