March 18, 2021 – The Brookings Institute published this commentary that examines the barriers to the generation and use of quality cost data in order to identify potential solutions to these barriers. The project draws on years of research from Brookings’ early childhood and education costing project on data and transparency, innovations, and outcome-based financing to document key principles for effective data collection and use in education and ECD.
Initial research indicates that there are both demand- and supply-side barriers to collecting, understanding, and analyzing cost data. While all these barriers may not be present in all contexts, at least some combination of these barriers is contributing to the global challenge of improving learning outcomes.