Lant Pritchett on CCTs for education

...“seeing” that teachers should be more accountable for a quality of schooling experience that would retain students however requires seeing what even a child can see, but which the state has no interest in seeing, and hence no capability to see. Holding powerful teachers accountable, while cost-saving and learning increasing, is politically difficult. Even giving poor people a choice in where their children attend school is politically difficult to get by the educationist lobby. But holding poor people accountable is always politically easy...

Lant Pritchett - please read in full

Lant Pritchett explains why CCTs are not the way to go if we really want to improve the quality of education in our schools, and are not just happy getting more bums on the seat. Pritchett explains why education cannot be approached purely from the demand side - and there is plenty of evidence to back this argument - including some plainly obvious data on enrolment and quality of learning among kids in countries like India, Ghana and many others. Clearly, unless teachers can be held accountable (whether hiring contract teachers en-masse is even possible is a different question altogether) in some form, there is not much governments can do to improve education outcomes among children.

Update on 12/1: a response from Berk Ozler, arguing that more school in itself may be a good thing