In Madagascar, educational planners embrace the future

Dejes Rasidy is a seasoned educational planner with nearly three decades of experience. He has seen both progress and persistent inequalities evolve in Madagascar's education system, catering to nearly 12 million school-age children below the age of 14.

"Madagascar is vast, and that's why I insist on the importance of sharing our years of experience - they are the future generations," he says.

Dejes is referring not only to the children of Madagascar- but the new generation of educational planners who design the plans and policies that shape their education and learning.

Over the past three years, he has been able to impart his knowledge and experiences onto the next generation of planners through the Educational Planning and Information System Support Project (PAPESI), a multi-year initiative aimed at strengthening capacities of the education administration to pilot and implement education reforms. The programme has now trained 115 education officials across all administrative levels.

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Strengthening planning capacities across the nation

Through PAPESI, the Ministry of National Education has focused on strengthening the education systemat its core, tackling challenges such as limited resources, a lack of training for officials, and a wave of recent retirements across the education administration.

Through face-to-face workshops and online training, PAPESI has equipped education officers, from the capital to local districts, with the skills to analyze data, design effective plans, and implement strategies that can transform the education landscape for years to come.

Participants reviewed the entire planning and policy cycle, identified strengths and challenges in the education sector at the most local level, crafted strategies to improve education quality, and analyzed funding sources.

Fleury Nirina Ramiandrisoa, head of planning for the Vakinankaratra region, described a profound shift in how planning is implemented.

At the beginning, both my team and I had already conducted diagnostics, but we had only done so superficially, limiting ourselves to constructing a problem tree. Today, thanks to the training through PAPESI, we know it's crucial to follow specific steps to perform a comprehensive diagnosis.

One of its impacts is the improvement of daily practices, particularly in monitoring and evaluation.

Building resilience at the local level

PAPESI has also enhanced accountability in planning and strengthened collaboration as it bridges the gap between central and sub-national planning. As a participant turned resource person, Solotiana Ramandimbimanana has seen the benefits first-hand.

"It's easier to plan now because we know each other better. It wasn't just about hierarchy, but a close relationship with a real sharing of ideas," he says.

Solotiana has appreciated PAPESI's focus on the importance of understanding local realities. "The choice of programmes and interventions must be based on this understanding," he says. His sharpened skills are already being applied to a new national strategy on disaster risk management, an area where he excels.

With the effects of climate change palpable across the country, Solotiana says PAPESI has helped him identify all the key points that need to be considered in the strategy, from design to implementation. "PAPESI has given us a solid basis for what lies ahead and what needs to be done," he says.

Reshaping the role of the planner

A key goal of PAPESI has been to strengthen the role of the education planner, which is designated as a specific group in the Malagasy civil service.

"Planners are responsible for clearly defining the priority actions needed to improve the quality of education," says Mamy Rakotomanana, a junior trainer at the Malagasy Institute of Planning Techniques (IMATEP) and resource person in PAPESI. "It is the planners who have to determine the priority actions to remedy the current context in education."

"Each planner plays a key role. If they work at the local level, they must be able to detect the main difficulties facing the system, such as problems related to school enrolment or success," adds Henintsoa Razafimampionona, head of division in the policy evaluation and studies service of the DPE (the Direction de la Planification de l'Education) in the Ministry of National Education, who started as a participant and later became a resource person.

The participants also see the value of bringing together various levels of education administration together through PAPESI. "It's really interesting to bring together staff from the central office, the [regional level] DREN, and the CISCO (school district level) for this kind of training. It's very relevant," Razafimampionona says.

Fanilo Andriatsimamitaka, an IIEP alumna and Head of the Coordination and Steering Service at the General Secretariat of the Ministry of National Education, has been a key resource person from the beginning. She has observed that planning is now receiving the attention it deserves. New tools are also available, including the reference framework of indicators, which allows policies to be based on evidence.

"The participants who attended the training in the Vakinankaratra region were truly interested in the strategic level. They requested tools, specifically a dashboard, for monitoring and evaluation and for making informed decisions," she says.

Laying the foundation for the future

PAPESI's legacy extends beyond its immediate results. In addition to training education officers, it is supporting the development of a 10-year national training strategy and a toolkit of guidelines for ongoing capacity building within the Ministry of Education. It has also strengthened Madagascar's Education Management Information System (EMIS) by revising its architecture, developing a data warehouse, training staff, creating a procedural manual for data collection, and installing essential IT equipment like servers and computers.

Strengthening EMIS for reliable educational data

The PAPESI project has enhanced the Education Management Information System (EMIS) by developing a centralized data warehouse to store and disseminate key educational data. Capacity-building activities focused on data modeling aligned with the Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange (SDMX) standard and the implementation of .Stat Suite, an open-source solution for efficient production and dissemination of high-quality statistical data. Training sessions, supported by UNESCO, OECD, and ILO, equipped staff with skills to sustain the system.

To support EMIS operations, an operations manual was created to guide the Ministry of National Education in managing annual school censuses. It standardizes procedures, defines roles, and organizes tasks across five phases-from preparation to data dissemination-ensuring consistency and data quality. An expert was also assigned to the Education Planning Directorate (DPE) of the Ministry to provide support for education planning activities throughout the duration of the project.

Additionally, technical expertise of 60 Ministry staff was enhanced through 20 training modules by École Supérieure des Technologies de l'Information (ESTI) on data analysis, database management, and software development. Investments in infrastructure, including 94 computers and a central server at both central and decentralized levels, further strengthened EMIS capacity and long-term sustainability.

In pictures: PAPESI closing ceremony

Key actions to support educational planning in Madagascar

• 115 staff members from 23 regions trained in the fundamentals of education planning
• A 10-year training strategy for education planners developed
• A scalable planning toolkit developed
• An online-accessible data warehouse for education statistics established
• A operations manual for the EMIS created
• Over 60 staff members received technical training for their EMIS-related tasks. 54 desktops were distributed to 54 CISCO offices, along with a server to host the data warehouse solution and 40 desktops at the central level.