Public Policy Reforms: A Scholarly Perspective on Education 5.0 Primary and Secondary Education in Zimbabwe

Literature Review

Palier and Surel (2005) stated that three important essentials can bring about changes in policies: Institutions (processes, context), interests (actors, power), and ideas (content, evidence, and values); which they have referred to as the “3Is.” These influences affect each stage of the process, from agenda setting to the identification of alternatives, weighing up the options, choosing the most favourable, and implementing them.

The policy process is influenced by a range of interest groups and actors that exert power and authority over policy-making. Literature shows that education is taking shape in environments that are progressively intricate, which ultimately determines the way contemporary education systems are administered (Burns, Koster and Fuster, 2016). In addition, education systems are moving from fundamentally top-down systems to more flat exchanges in which cooperation and construction are the norm. To this end, scholars on reforming education posit that, unless teachers, school leaders, and other actors in education comprehend and embrace the significance of the policy, it is not likely to get implemented (Fullan, 2015).

Think tanks have also been found to influence the policymaking process. According to McGann (2011), think tanks are institutions that help policymakers or the public at large with advice on issues that may be domestic or international after having carried out investigations, scrutiny, and engagement. McGann further asserted that think tanks could also be viewed as policy actors in their own right or special interest groups who help to entrench democratic values of pluralism, openness, and accountability.

Public policy reforms usually encounter hitches. Difficulties that could be encountered in implementing educational policy include organisation matters, shortage of organisational resources, actors’ capacity or resistance to the reforms (Viennet & Pont, 2017), communication, dimensions and amenability of the policy operatives and policy goals (Weaver, 2010), lack of vision, or failure to strike the right balance between marginal changes and structural transformations (Keller & Price, 2011). Similarly, a study on restructuring public sector activities revealed that there is a deep-rooted practice for the education segment to stick to the status quo and resist transformation in many countries (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2017). This is largely due to stakeholders preferring to go by the status quo for fear of footing the costs associated with reforms and the shroud of uncertainty on the results (OECD, 2016).

Hess (2013) asserted that there is vast distance between policy and practice. Educational policies are often crafted with little regard to the implementation matrix, for example, the teachers’ skills set and readiness to deliver on the policies (Viennet & Pont, 2017). This often results in the ability of schools to implement the educational policies being overstated (OECD, 2010), with consequent poor outcomes.

Corruption, which is a cankerworm in the implementation stage of public policies, must be confronted headlong. In Nigeria, it is generally believed that most of their current policies are good, but implementation is sadly poor because of the hydra-headed problem of dishonesty (Popoola, 2016).

The environment in which policies are operationalised is dynamic and shrouded in uncertainty. The policies, therefore, need to be constantly monitored and appraised to check on whether or not they are still on the desired course that would ultimately lead to the achievement of the set goals and outcomes. Popoola (2016) argued that policy evaluation is fundamental, as policies need to be reviewed and fine-tuned periodically to ensure that they remain relevant and useful in solving the problems for which they were formulated, as well as emerging challenges.

In practice, policy evaluation presents numerous challenges to the evaluators. Citizens and governments alike tend to interpret the actual effects of a policy to serve their intentions. Often, governments avoid the precise definition of policy objectives because, otherwise, politicians would risk taking the blame for obvious failure (Werner & Wegrich, 2006). Further, policy decisions cannot be limited to intended effects only. An additional problem stems from the time horizon: