Capacity Building

CREATE supports capacity building in a variety of ways. The main focus of capacity building activities is the development of research skills amongst team members, and in particular junior and middle level CREATE researchers in Partner Institutions. Secondary audiences include other staff members in Partner Institutes, graduate students, NGO staff, DFID advisors and agency staff, and policy makers who engage with CREATE. A third layer are those in training colleges, local government, and the media. CREATE’s resources determine its focus on the inner core. Examples of capacity building activities are described below. A concentric model illustrates how stakeholder groups are distributed across different levels of activity.

 

There are several different strands to CREATE capacity building. These include:

• Support for Research Teams
• Support for Post Graduate Research Degrees
• Opportunities to Publish for Early Career Researchers
• Contributions to National and International Conferences
• The CREATE Research Associate Network
• Technical Workshops
• Integration of CREATE Research outputs and data into Post-graduate courses and research training programmes and In Service support for education officers and teachers where appropriate.

CREATE Support for Research Teams

CREATE has developed its programme of research through collaborative multi-country workshops that have discussed research questions, developed an extensive research design, produced a range of data collection instruments, and provided technical assistance for data analysis. These workshops have varied in scope and length. They have been used primarily to support capacity building linked to the development of community and school based empirical work, but have also been used to support the development of country analytic reviews and complementary research projects. The process of research development has been both iterative and interactive and this has ensured that different perspectives and contexts have been recognised.

Initial design workshops during the inception phase have been followed by technical support workshops in the UK and in-country. These are listed on the website. In workshops capacity is built with experienced and junior researchers working closely together. The approach is one of on-the-job learning related to specific tasks that need completing.

When appropriate, technical assistance has been delivered directly to assist the research teams and build capacity. Thus more experienced researchers and those with specific skills (e.g. in data analysis) have been supported to work with research teams in-country where this has been invited. Junior researchers have been sponsored to spend time in the UK to work on CREATE research products. Needs vary and a flexible pattern of responding to demand has been established. Partners have also organised their own technical workshops tailored to local needs, and focused on specific audiences. These are also listed on the website.

Capacity has also been built through extensive support for progression from data collection through analysis to final publication. CREATE has maintained a quality assurance and peer review system which itself shares messages that generate common understandings of what is required for international publication. This process is methodical and systematic and essential to the finalisation of good quality products.

Capacity building support for institutions linked to CREATE depends on their own priorities and staffing practices. In all cases CREATE complements the work programme of Partner Institutions and does not directly employ staff or manage their career development. Partners have been encouraged to use the opportunities generated by CREATE to build capacity in line with their institutional plans.

Research Associates

CREATE has set up a research associate scheme and currently has more than 25 research associates across the research sites who are listed on the website. The associates include post doctoral and more experienced researchers linked to CREATE. All those who publish with CREATE are invited to become research associates.

CREATE Research Associates benefit from:

• Direct access to CREATE resources and global library resources.
• Invitations to contribute to the CREATE Newsletter.
• Opportunities to publish research papers in the Pathways to Access series with ISBN numbers and web based projection to a wide audience.
• Opportunities to undertake commissioned research work.
• Invitations to CREATE events including the CREATE lecture series in London and Sussex and elsewhere. Events are listed on the website.

The research associate scheme is a way of developing capacity and promoting a network of more and less experienced researchers.

CREATE Support for Researchers

CREATE supports directly and indirectly a substantial number of postgraduate researchers working on a wide range of topics covering the different zones of exclusion. The resources for this have been generated as an addition to the CREATE programme. Thus the Commonwealth Scholarships scheme has provided a cluster of six specially allocated awards to CREATE. The Government of Ghana has sponsored over 20 staff members on the International Ed D programme at Sussex. The University of Winneba has financed two full time Doctoral places linked to CREATE. The Institute of Education in London has provided a Post Doctoral Fellowship. NUEPA in Delhi has developed its doctoral programme on which several students have worked on CREATE related topics. A Masters student has been sponsored at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. Two members of the BRAC research team have benefitted from postgraduate awards. A selected list of the postgraduate students is included below.

Selected List of Post Graduate Students

Award	Funding body	Location	Name / location of candidate	Research focus	Dates
DPhil	Commonwealth Scholarship	Uni of Sussex	Anupam Pachauri, India	Multiple providers of educational services, Rajasthan, India	Oct 07-10
DPhil	Commonwealth Scholarship	Uni of Sussex	Stephanie Buckland, South Africa	Education access for unregistered migrants in South Africa	Oct 08 - 11
DPhil	Commonwealth Scholarship	Uni of Sussex	Kingsley Arkorful, Ghana	Education Access in Northern Ghana: Capitation Grant and Complementary Education	Sept 09 – 12
DPhil	Commonwealth scholarship (split-site award)	NUEPA / Uni of Sussex	Anita Sharma, India	Education access among nomads: Case Study of the Bakkarwals of Jammu and Kashmir	Sept 09 – 12
DPhil	Commonwealth scholarship (split-site award)	NUEPA / Uni of Sussex	Shashiranjan Jha	Fiscal decentralisation and access in India	Sept 10 – Sept 13 (tbc)
DPhil	MOESS Ghana	Uni of Sussex	Luke Akaguri, Ghana	Educational financing and access in Ghana	Oct 07-10
DPhil	MOESS Ghana	Uni of Sussex	Eric Ananga, Ghana	Drop outs from school, Ghana	Oct 07-10
Int EdD	MOESS Ghana	Uni of Sussex	Ato Essuman	Education decentralisation: a review of policy, practice and outcomes, in Ghana	Oct 05-10
DPhil (complete)	Self	Uni of Sussex	Joanna Harma	Non state providers of education in India	Oct 05 - 09
DPhil	Self	Uni of Sussex	Stuart Cameron	Family choice strategies for education, Bangladesh	Oct 07 - 10
DPhil	Self	Uni of Sussex	Guarav Siddhu	School feeding programmes in India	Oct 07 – 10
D Phil	Self	Uni Sussex	Asayo Obah	Secondary School Transitions in Kenya	2005-2009
MA (complete)	Self	Uni of Sussex	Katharine Giffard-Lindsey	Inclusive education in India	05 - 06
Int EdD	CREATE	Uni of Sussex	Zia Sabur	Non state providers of education, Bangladesh	July 07 -10
Int EdD	CREATE	Uni of Sussex	Altaf Hossain	Access to primary education in Bangladesh	Jul 2010 – June 2011
PhD (with M Res)	ESRC	Institute of Education	Caine Rolleston	Human Capital, Poverty, Educational Access and Exclusion: The Case of Ghana 1991-2006	Oct 06-10
EdD	self	Institute of Education	Desmond Bermingham	The interaction between global and local education policy processes. A comparative case study of the Education for All Fast Track Initiative in Rwanda and Ethiopia	Oct 05 - 09
PhD (with M Res)	ESRC	Institute of Education	Victoria Turrent	Aid Effectiveness and Education: Determining Priorities for Aid Allocation in the Education Sector	Oct 08 - 12
PhD	Aga Khan Scholarship	Institute of Education	Ruth Otienoh	Large Classes in Kenya: creating interaction opportunities for learners through action research	Oct 06 - 10
PhD	IOE Centenary scholarship	Institute of Education	Audrey Mwanza	An evaluation of the process used to design the ‘re-entry’ policy for girls who drop out of school due to pregnancy in Zambia	Oct 06 -10
PhD	UNDP and self	Institute of Education	Grace Wang	Actors, Cultures and Development management: a case study of an international collaboration project in girls’ education in China	Oct 06 -10
PhD	University of Colombo and self	Institute of Education	Jeevani Herath	The Impact of Social Capital, Human Capital and Financial Capital at School and at Home on Educational Outcomes of Grade Four Students in Urban Primary Schools in Sri Lanka.	Oct 06 -10

Early Career Researchers – Support for Publication

CREATE is supporting publication by a number of ‘early career researchers’ (ECRs). Publications are peer reviewed. Mentoring support assists authors to develop their writing and presentational skills to international publication level. Partner Institute Coordinators (PICs) provide this locally and the CREATE publication system does so centrally. This investment in capacity is essential to ensure research products sustain high quality and have impact. It requires knowledge intensive support. CREATE makes small grants available for fieldwork, finalising publications and conference participation to publicise ECR work. Some examples of capacity building for ECRs are listed below.

CREATE publications by ECRs:

PTA	Title	Authors	Date	ECR
14	Negotiating Education for Many: Enrolment, Dropout and Persistence in the Community Schools of Kolondieba, Mali	Peter Laugharn	2007	Peter Laugharn
15	Inclusive Education in India: Interpretation, Implementation and Issues	Katharine Giffard-Lindsay	2007	Katharine Giffard-Lindsay
16	Dropping out of School: A Cross Country Review of the Literature	Frances Hunt	2008	Frances Hunt
17	Small Multigrade schools and Increasing Access to Education in India	Nicole Blum and Rashmi Diwan	2007	Nicole Blum
18	Gender Equity in Education: A Review of Trends and Factors	Madhumita Bandyopadhyay & Ramya Subrahmanian	2008	Madhumita Bandyopadhyay & Ramya Subrahmanian
19	Education and Social Equity: With a Special Focus on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in Elementary Education	Mona Sedwal & Sangeeta Kamat	2008	Mona Sedwal & Sangeeta Kamat
21	Does Free Secondary Education Enable the Poor to Gain Access? A study from rural Kenya.	Asayo Ohba	2009	Asayo Ohba
22	Consumption, Poverty, Educational Access and Attainment: An Analysis of Ghana in the 1990s	Caine Rolleston	2009	Caine Rolleston
23	School choice for the poor? The limits of Marketisation of primary education in rural India	Joanna Harma	2010	Joanna Harma
31	Seasonality and educational access: the case of primary education in sub-Saharan Africa	Sierd Hadley	2010	Sierd Hadley
34	Debating Diversity in Provision of Universal Primary Education in Bangladesh	Zia-Us-Sabur and Manzoor Ahmed	2010	Zia-Us-Sabur
39	Girls’ Access to Education in China: Actors, Cultures and the Windmill of Development Management	Grace Wang	2010	Grace Wang
45	Access to and exclusion from education in the slums of Dhaka, Bangladesh	Stuart Cameron	2010	Stuart Cameron
46	Exploring the Viability of School-Based Support for Vulnerable Children: A case study of two township schools in Johannesburg	Samantha Williams	2010	Samantha Williams
48	Age in Grade Congruence and Progression in Basic Education in Bangladesh	Altaf Hossain	2010	Altaf Hossain
Forthcoming monographs by ECRS
	Multiple providers of educational services in Rajasthan, India	Anupam Pachauri	2010 forthcoming	Anupam Pachauri
	Poverty, Silent Exclusion and Equity: Access to Education in Bangladesh	Altaf Hossain and Benjamin Zeitlyn	2010 forthcoming	Altaf Hossain and Benjamin Zeitlyn
	Access to secondary school in Uttar Pradesh in India	Guarav Siddhu	2010 forthcoming	Guarav Siddhu
	Education financing and access in Ghana	Luke Akaguri	2010 forthcoming	Luke Akaguri
	Drop outs from school in a fishing community in Ghana	Eric Ananga	2010 forthcoming	Eric Ananga
	Educational access for unregistered migrants in South Africa	Stephanie Buckland	2011 forthcoming	Stephanie Buckland
	The dilemma of access to education for the nomads of South Asia – A literature review	Anita Sharma	2010 forthcoming	Anita Sharma
	Schooling and work in Ethiopia	Kate Orkin	2010 forthcoming	Kate Orkin
	Decentralisation, multiple providers and the delivery of educational services to children: case studies of two upazillas	Zia Us Sabur	2010 forthcoming	Zia Us Sabur
	School for Life and its Impact on Access.	Kingsley Arkorful	2011 forthcoming	Kingsley Arkoful

Policy Brief	Title	Authors	Date	ECR
Policy Brief 4	Size Matters for EFA	Nicole Blum and Angela Little	2008	Nicole Blum
Policy Brief 5	Increasing Access through Multigrade Teaching and Learning	Nicole Blum and Angela Little	2008	Nicole Blum
Ghana Policy Brief 4	Fosterage among the Dagomba in Savelugu-Nanton, Ghana	Caine Rolleston	2010	Caine Rolleston
Bangladesh Policy Brief 1	Education for the Urban Poor in Bangladesh	Stuart Cameron	2010	Stuart Cameron
Ghana Policy Brief 3	Public and Private Schooling in Rural Ghana, are the Poor Being Served?	Luke Akaguri	2010	Luke Akaguri
Ghana Policy Brief 1	Typologies of Drop Outs in Southern Ghana	Eric Ananga	2010	Eric Ananga
South Africa Policy Brief 4	Gender Dimensions of Access in South Africa	Veerle Dieltens	2010 forthcoming	Veerle Dieltens
Ghana Policy Brief 2	Complementary education and access to primary schooling in Northern Ghana	Kingsley Arkorful	2010	Kingsley Arkoful

 Journal Articles by ECRs

A special edition of the International Journal of Educational Development will be published in 2010 and edited by Keith Lewin, Angela Little and Frances Hunt. The following papers will be submitted from early career researchers:

• Eric Ananga: Typology of School Dropout: the Dimensions and Dynamics of Dropout in Ghana
• Luke Akaguri and Kwame Akyeampong: Fee-free public or low-fee private basic education in rural Ghana: What does it cost the poor?
• Stephanie Buckland: Uncovering South Africa’s ‘New Apartheid’: The challenges to Educational Access for Non-nationals in South Africa
• Stuart Cameron: Whether and where to enrol: choosing a primary school in the slums of Dhaka, Bangladesh
• Joanna Harma: Low Cost Private schooling in India: Is it Pro Poor and Equitable?
• Asayo Ohba: Abolition of secondary school fees in Kenya: Responses by the poor
• Caine Rolleston: Expanded Educational Access with Growing Inequalities: the case of Ghana 1991-2006
• Gaurav Siddhu: Who makes it to secondary school? Determinants of transition in rural India
• Victoria Turrent: Expanding Support for Education in Fragile States: What Role for the Education for All - Fast Track Initiative?

In 2009 a special edition of Comparative Education (Vol 4:2 2009) was edited by Keith Lewin and Kwame Akyeampong. It included contributions from ECRs

• Caine Rolleston: The determination of exclusion: evidence from the Ghana Living Standards Surveys 1991–2006
• Joseph Ghartey Ampiah and Christine Adu-Yeboah: Mapping the incidence of school dropouts: a case study of communities in Northern Ghana
• Shireen Motala, Veerle Dieltiens and Yusuf Sayed: Physical access to schooling in South Africa: mapping dropout, repetition and age-grade progression in two districts
• Brahm Fleisch and Jennifer Shindler: Gender repetition: school access, transitions and equity in the ‘Birth-to-Twenty’ cohort panel study in urban South Africa
• Joseph Chimombo: Changing patterns of access to basic education in Malawi: a story of a mixed bag?

 Contributions to National and International Conferences

Researchers are supported to attend conferences and make presentations. In 2009 CREATE ECRs presented at the UKFIET conference in Oxford the following papers:

• Caine Rolleston: Educational Access and Poverty: The Case of Ghana 1991-2006
• Eric Ananga: Dimensions and dynamics of school dropout is poverty enough explanation of school disruption?
• Luke Akaguri: The Poor Cost and Access to Schooling in rural Ghana: Implications for EFA and Reduction in Intergenerational Poverty
• Stuart Cameron: Education and the Urban Poor in Dhaka, Bangladesh
• Asayo Ohba: The Immediate Assessment of the introduction of fee free secondary education in Kenya: Emerging issues
• Anupam Pachauri: The Policy and Practice of Partnership Models of School Adoption to Promote Access to Quality Education-The Rajasthan Education Initiative
• Desmond Bermingham: The Formation of the Education for All Fast Track Initiative (FTI)

Similar opportunities were supported in each of the collaborating partner sites at national and international conferences listed on the CREATE website. Experienced researchers also made presentations at development partner meetings and DFID policy retreats, and were engaged in policy dialogue with governments, NGOs and donors.

Integration of CREATE Research outputs and data into post-graduate courses and research training programmes and in service support for education officers and teachers where appropriate.

CREATE staff contribute widely to post graduate courses in their respective institutions and use the output of the research in teaching and to shape further research. Across the seven universities, over 1000 post graduates a year are likely to experience some contact with CREATE research and research outputs Many more post graduates access the website and download materials. The impact of this on capacity building ifs difficult to gauge but it is clearly significant. Masters and doctoral students will form the next generation of leaders, policy makers, and technical support professionals.

CREATE papers and power point presentations are available on the website and in hard copy free. They are extensively used in the Universities of Sussex and London and in partner institutions in South Asia and Sub Saharan Africa. They are also being used to support national training programmes organised by NUEPA in India for educational planners, and to enhance the newly developed PhD programme that NUEPA has launched.

In Conclusion

A short document cannot capture the range and depth of capacity building in CREATE. Moreover there is not a single model but a flexible strategy designed partly to respond to need and partly to anticipate need. Capacity is being built in individuals and in institutions on a scale commensurate with the resources available.

CREATE is a programme not a project. It has sought to combine high quality research with needs to build capacity and train researchers whilst undertaking research. It has done this in environments not always conducive to stability and accumulation, and with predictable and unpredictable changes in staffing over time.

The core elements of capacity building are outlined in this short paper. Of special note are the extensive relationship that has been built with the Ministry of Education in Ghana and its staff. This has given opportunities for over 20 professionals to undertake systematic study and analysis and develop insights and curiosity into the problems of access in Ghana that they would otherwise not have had the opportunity to do. They will also form a cadre who share similar experiences and have the opportunity to work together in a unique way. This has been made possible by generous support from the Government of Ghana.

In India NUEPA has also been fortunate to have the resources to start its own PhD Programme which has debated and developed ideas from CREATE. It has also been able to use research instruments and outputs for all India training programmes which build capacity amongst educational planners. This has extended the influence of ideas developed around CREATE and allowed synergies to evolve on a significant scale.

The impact of these capacity building activities will only be clear in the next generation of educational researchers, planners, and policy makers. It will depend in part on how they are deployed and how they deploy themselves. CREATE is confident the effects will be lasting and significant.

Annex: Selected Capacity Building Activities and Events

Date: 27-28 September 2010
Event: CREATE Symposium with Edqual and Recoup. CREATE researchers, students and associates collaborated with EdQual and RECOUP and the Ministry of Education in Ghana and DFID in a Symposium to feed back the results of the research to stakeholders.

Date: 13 September 2010
Event: Lancet-LIDC Commission: Lessons Learned from the MDGs and Future Goal Setting.
A new blueprint for international development has been published by The Lancet to coincide with the UN's major summit about the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The recommendations made by authors including CREATE's Professor Angela Little, of the Institute of Education and Veerle Dieltiens, of the Wits Education Policy Unit in Johannesburg were discussed at a launch event at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Date: 22-28 August 2010
Event: IARIW 31st General Conference, St-Gallen, Switzerland. Dr Ricardo Sabates and Jimena Hernandez presented at the conference.

Date: 15 July 2010
Event: Private Sector Development in a Big Society – DFID Retreat – Education Sector; The DFID Education Advisors met with the Private Sector Department of DFID at an Advisors Retreat. About 40 Advisors attended. Sussex and CREATE were well represented, associate Joanna Harma presented her work..

Date: 22 June 2010
Event: Annual One World Media Awards Ceremony, London, UK. Makutano Junction-New Media Award winner. CREATE contributed story lines

Date: 28 May-5 June 2010
Event: CREATE technical workshop, Mankessim, Ghana, training and capacity building of CREATE Ghana team.

Date: 19 Nov 09
Event: Seminar on Strengthening the global education compact: lessons learnt from the EFA fast track Initiative, London, UK.CREATE research associate Desmond Bermingham presented. CREATE research associate Victoria Turrent was the discussant.

Date: 15-17 Sept 09
Event: Politics, Policies and Progress, 10th UKFIET International Conference on Education and Development, Oxford, UK
CREATE presentations by researchers, research students and associates

Date: 10-11 Sept 09
Event: National Seminar on Education for All, NUEPA, India organised by R Govinda and Mona Sedwal

Date: 23 April 09
Event: CREATE conference: University of Cape Coast, Ghana
CREATE researchers and associates presenting

Date: 19-21 April 09
Event: MOESS and CREATE conference, Ghana
Presentations by CREATE researchers and associates.

Date: 24-25 March 09
Event: National Seminar on the Common School System and Inclusive Development of Education, NUEPA, Madhumita Bandyopadhyay gave a paper: Common School System in India: Where Do We Stand?

Date: 19 March 09
Event: Gauteng Department of Education Curriculum Information & Knowledge Dissemination Colloquium, Johannesburg
Veerle Dieltiens presented overview of CREATE findings

Date: 16- 17 March 09
Event: Curriculum development and implementation workshop, BRAC Centre, Dhaka
CREATE team organised workshop

Date: 5-7 March 09
Event: Equity and Education in India: Policy issues and challenges seminar, University of Delhi, India
CREATE Papers: Mona Sedwal - Scheduled Caste Children in Elementary Education, Social Equity Concerns; R. Govinda - Elementary Education in India: Exploring Zones of Exclusion

Date: 5-7 March 09
Event: International Seminar on Quality School Education For All, IHC, New Delhi
CREATE Papers: Rashmi Diwan - Increasing access- decreasing quality; R Govinda and Madhumita Bandyopadhyay - School quality and the phenomenon of silent exclusion: access, equity and participation.

Date: March 09
Event: National Conference Ghana (with Edqual and Recoup), Presentations by CREATE Ghana team on fieldwork and thematic papers.

Date: 4-6 Feb 09
Event: National Seminar on Small Schools in India, NUEPA, New Delhi, Rashmi Diwan presented two papers.

Date: 3-5 Dec 08
Event: National seminar on EFA: Access, exclusion and outcomes. Dissemination workshop for CREATE and RECOUP (NUEPA and CORD), Delhi, India.
India CREATE team. R. Govinda, Rashmi Diwan & Mona Sedwal.