CIDEC Seminar
Strengthening Education Systems: Partnership, Practice, and Accountability
This seminar features two speakers offering insights from research and practice on how public education systems can be strengthened through approaches to accountability, partnership, and implementation. Dr. Yifei Yan will discuss how public policy and administration research can broaden conventional understandings of educational accountability, drawing on examples from China, India, and Brazil. Siddesh Sarma, Co-Founder and CEO of Leadership for Equity, will then share lessons from a decade of working in partnership with public institutions and government school systems in India.
About the Speakers
Dr. Yifei Yan
Dr. Yifei Yan is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Public Administration and Public Policy at the University of Southampton. She is Co-Editor of Teaching Public Administration and also an expert associate with the National Foundation for Educational Research in the UK. For the past decade, Dr. Yan’s interdisciplinary research lies at the intersection of comparative public administration and educational studies. She is the author of the book Getting schools to work better: Educational accountability and teacher support in India and China which is based on her award-winning doctoral dissertation. Her research on education policy design and practice has been published in leading journals such as the Policy Sciences, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, International Review of Administrative Science, and Policy Design and Practice and recognised by the European Commission with a Seal of Excellence. Among others, her works has been cited by the World Bank, OECD, while she has provided written evidence to the UK Parliament and policy consultancy for the European Commission on several education-related topics.
Siddesh Sarma
Siddesh is an educationist and entrepreneur with 15+ years of experience in the education and non-profit sector, who strives to co-create an equitable society and thriving life for all living beings. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Leadership For Equity, an Indian education non-profit that works closely with state and local governments and empowers middle-tier officials to lead education reform in public school systems. With an MPhil in education from TISS Mumbai, he has featured in various National Policy Committees and has worked for the past 7 years collaborating with and advising the School Education Department, Govt. of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, 2 large states in India. He has also led state-level teacher development projects supported by the World Bank and co-authored sectoral publications on teacher development and working with public education systems. Siddesh started his work in education through Teach For India Fellowship in 2011 in under-resourced schools in Pune, India. He has also served on the Advisory Board of Teach For India, Pune and continues to serve on the board of Dr. Anjali Morris Education and Health Foundation which provides contextual interventions for children with specific learning disabilities.
