TELL-it-True Archives - Accountability Lab

Breaking the Silence: SMS Helps Liberian Schools to Improve Education

By: Blair Glencorse. This article was originally published by National Geographic. Students and academics in schools throughout Liberia are taking advantage of a system that allows them to gather information and discuss possible solutions to problems they face in the country’s corrupt education system. In this edition of Digital Diversity, Blair Glencorse talks about “Tell-it-True”, which uses text messages to allow users to share problems and concerns that would otherwise go unspoken. Digital Diversity is a series of blog posts from kiwanja.net featuring the many ways mobile phones and other appropriate technologies are being used throughout the world to improve, enrich, and empower billions of [...]

Testing new tools for accountability in higher education

By: Blair Glencorse. This article was originally published in Transparency International's 2013 Global Corruption Report: Education (Section 4.14). The international community has rarely engaged coherently on issues of corruption within higher education, focusing instead on issues such as building teachers’ capacity, infrastructure development and programmes to increase access. The learning to be garnered from testing new accountability approaches therefore has important implications for the future of universities and colleges. Higher education in what are called ‘fragile states’ suffers from a host of issues that manifest themselves in different forms – from a lack of strategies and plans, to absent regulations [...]