The Ian Potter Foundation backs Ibtisam Abu-Duhou to research Education Economics
For the upholders of a liberal education, the words ‘education’ and ‘economics’ do not mix easily with one another. Yet in a time of increasing government scrutiny over the use of public funds in the education sector, it has become more and more critical for educators to demonstrate the social and economic benefits of education systems. The situation is only intensified in the sphere of Indigenous education, where literacy levels and high-school completion rates are the lowest in Australia. As the only academic in Australia with a research position in the specialist field of “Education Economics”, Associate Professor Ibtisam Abu-Duhou is perfectly qualified to supply the critical need for an economic analysis of educational outcomes in the Northern Territory.
In November of 2003, the Ian Potter foundation awarded a grant of $435,000 to the School for Social and Policy Research, “to pursue leading edge research focused on critical evaluation and cost-benefit assessment of education interventions in Northern Australia, with strong emphasis on issues of allocation in Indigenous education, allocation priorities and education service efficiency” (IPF, Annual Report, 2005). The grant is to be allocated over 3 years, and was used to attract the skills and experience of Associate Professor Abu-Duhou to Charles Darwin University. Since September of 2004, Ibtisam has been a key collaborator in a number of projects run by SSPR to improve educational outcomes in the NT, including the economic evaluation of the National Accelerated Literacy Program.
Prior to her arrival in the NT, Associate Professor Abu-Duhou had already acquired years of experience as a practitioner, lecturer, supervisor, and consultant in the field of education economics. During her time at the University of Melbourne - where she began working in 1988 - Ibtisam was involved in the planning, implementation and evaluation of education systems in several countries. Through her role as a consultant in education economics, planning and budgeting, she has worked in numerous countries in the Middle East and Europe, as well as Pakistan, Kashmir, North Africa, Indonesia and Malaysia. Ibtisam has also worked extensively as a consultant for international and national organizations such as the World Bank, UNESCO, and the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP), and the Overseas Projects Victoria Projects and AusAID.
In mid-1990s, Associate Professor Abu-Duhou pioneered research methodology for formula-based approaches to financing schools, particularly in the context of creating self-managing schools or school-based management (SBM). This important research examined expenditure allocations to match learning needs of students in selected primary and secondary schools in Victoria. This detailed evaluation of education investment by using an “activity-led funding” analysis has been influential in the development of new approaches to the formula funding of schools, and was published as part of an important UNESCO publication under the heading Needs-based Formula Funding. In 1999, Associate Professor Abu-Duhou authored a UNESCO book into “School-Based Management”, which has also contributed to new approaches used for decentralising budget management in other sectors, together with an analysis of how these might be adapted to the education sector; to the identification of specific strategies for continued decentralization in the education sector, with a focus on the school itself, but including the provincial, district and subdistrict levels; and to providing policy directions and recommendations for a program of continued decentralization of education management. The book has been cited in numerous publications and in many languages, has been translated to French and Spanish, and was reviewed several times.
As a Palestinian living abroad, Ibtisam also has an acute awareness of the negative impact that social and economic disadvantage can have on the quality of education provided to the community. She feels passionately about the plight of the Palestinian people, and has taken concrete step to improve the accessibility and quality of the Palestinian education system. In 1995, Ibtisam returned to her country of birth to work as an advisor to the Palestinian Minister for Education, where she was involved in a most extraordinary range of high-level consultancy work and leadership in policy making, strategic planning, finances and budgeting, and institutional capacity building. She drew up the first ever budget for the education sector, developed and implemented a system for educational planning and policy analysis, developed a comprehensive computerised Educational Management Information System, and was involved in the development of the Education Act. Ibtisam was asked by the Minister to develop the first 5-year plan for the education sector, which involved the creation of an education policy and planning that was then entrusted with the planning, implementation, evaluation of the Palestinian education system.
While her practical work in Palestine demonstrates her commitment to improving educational outcomes in areas of economic disadvantage, Ibtisam also has a strong interest in the theoretical side of education economics. She states that one of her goals in the near future is “to develop a theory that links the allocation of education resource to the attainment of educational outcomes, with a particular focus on students living a marginalized a population”. No doubt, such theoretical work will be as important as her practical contribution to education systems all over the world.
