In the award-winning documentary, Waiting for Superman, alternatives to the traditional public school system are explored and debated. Following this tradition, the civil society group Mexicanos Primero recently released the documentary ¡De Panzazo! (‘barely passing’), directed by journalist Carlos Loret de Mola and documentary filmmaker Juan Carlos Rulfo.

I was delighted to join the recent colloquium, Getting to Equal in Education: Addressing Gender and Multiple Sources of Disadvantage to Achieve Learning.  It was a great initiative, with a whole range of experts and advocates in the room, ranging from old hands to much young blood!

My last two blogs, Lessons on School-Based Management from a Randomized Experiment and Empowering Parents to Improve Schooling: Powerful Evidence from Rural Mexico, have focused on empowering parents to help increase accountability in schools. However, too often, decentralization programs are designed without adequately conveying the messages about their purpose to the intended audiences; or, it is done in such a way that the program is rendered useless. 

          In my last blog I wrote about how empowering parents helps increase accountability in schools in rural Mexico. Although I said evidence was sparse, it is accumulating. In Africa, a number of rigorous impact evaluations are underway and starting to report findings.