OREANDA-NEWS. January 31, 2014. Moldova launched the first grant in the framework of the Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA), a World Bank-administered initiative that aims to support reforms in the country’s education sector.

The grant, in the amount of USD696 thousand, is implemented by the Moldovan independent think-tank EXPERT-GRUP, and focuses on supporting ongoing reforms in the education sector.

Improving the quality of the education system is one of the main priorities for the country, and the Government of Moldova, with support from the World Bank-financed Moldova Education Reform Project, is implementing comprehensive reforms with the overall objective of improving the quality, efficiency, and evidence-based policymaking.

The project “Empowered Citizens Enhancing Accountability of the Education Reform and Quality of Education in Moldova” will support the Government’s education reform program by increasing social accountability through the inclusion of citizens in monitoring the impact of reforms and budget allocations to education. The overall objective of this five-year initiative is to empower Moldovan citizens to engage local, regional and national authorities in evidence-based policy and budget dialogue regarding educational reform, quality of educational services, and development priorities of schools, as well as enable an environment in which social accountability initiatives thrive and develop. It will support an estimated sixty-five thousand students, parents, and staff in approximately 100 schools, in addition to regional civil society organizations (CSOs) local communities and local public authorities. Increased citizen participation in the reform process aims to strengthen the quality of education.

“Currently, parents and communities in Moldova are mostly uninformed about school performance”, said Abdoulaye Seck, World Bank Country Manager for Moldova.  ”This means that key stakeholders have a limited ability to hold schools and teachers accountable for lack of quality or inefficient use of resources. Addressing this challenge is critical in the context of the Government of Moldova’s ongoing education reform efforts given the increased autonomy in managing resources granted to schools.”

In light of this, the project has the following specific objectives:

Facilitate engagement of local stakeholders in approximately 100 schools using social accountability tools and promoting a dialogue on school budgets;

Improve the flow of information from users of education services on the performance of those services to local and national authorities;

Promote the use of social accountability tools as inputs into formal education budgetary processes;

Inform the public about the impact of wider economic and financial conditions on the educational sector and reforms;

Support the Ministry of Education and other policy stakeholders in improving the quality of data to better support an evidence-based policymaking process.

”The most appropriate tool for ensuring the sustainability and efficiency of any reform is to engage its stakeholders in the whole process, and the educational sector reform should not be an exception”, said Adrian Lupusor, Executive Director of EXPERT-GRUP. ”GPSA can serve as a fundamental mechanism for involving students, parents, teachers and the whole community in the on-going educational sector reforms. At the same time, it can increase the social accountability of the Government in this process. The reform can be better tailored to the local needs only after a broad engagement of the education system’s stakeholders in policy debates, budgeting and setting development priorities at the school level. It is extremely important that the selected 100 schools, which will be involved in this five-year project, will prove to be sufficiently motivated in order to disseminate these experiences and act as champions of change at the local level”.