Invited guests: Hon. Gabriel Mharadze Machinga, Minister of Education of Zimbabwe and Mmansetsa Marope, Director of the Education Research Network for Eastern and Southern Africa (ERNESA) and co-organizer of the Policy Research in Africa Commission
Question: How do education researchers and policy-makers come together to provide good education?
G. M. Machinga: Ideally, policy makers should make a number of choices like Education For All and researchers should provide their specialized knowledge, skills and instruments so that together we can decide how best we can achieve the ambition of providing every child with an education.
M. Marope: I would add that researchers may provide policy makers with information that will guide the selection of choices. This would also help the policy maker monitor the progress made towards delivering the promises made to the population. I should also add that part of the mission of the Commission for Policy Research in Africa is to blur the dividing line between policy-makers and researchers. If we come to the realization that we are one, our collaboration will be more fruitful.
G.M. Machinga: In that process of blurring the difference between policy makers and researchers, we are asking our colleagues to work faster. Policy makers are under pressure to deliver goods in specific areas and research tends to be thorough and systematic and hence slow. We shall not be waiting because civil society wants results. And so we are here to interface so that we find ways and means to make sure that we preserve the essence of research but at the same time we become as proactive and pragmatic as can be to get results coming.
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