As governments strive to create responsive policies that address stakeholders’ needs and produce long-term impact, establishing strong policymaking processes are equally necessary to ensure that reforms are intentional, evidence-based, equitable, and sustainable. Conversations between ministries on strengthening system-level processes are becoming more timely as there is a stronger desire for more actionable efforts from policymakers, rather than simply aspirational ones. At the heart of the conversation between the Department of Education (DepEd) in the Philippines and the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education (MoPSE) in Indonesia lies the desire to be able to translate policy intent into effective policy scale and implementation through its processes.
A cross-ministry exchange
EdTech Hub has been supporting DepEd in the Philippines and MoPSE in Indonesia on strengthening systems-level education policy transformation since early 2025.
Curiosities amongst both ministries prompted a cross-learning conversation as a way to share lessons learnt and insights across the work with the two ministries of education, both on the ‘policy sandboxing’ approach that has been adopted by the ministries to address their specific policy-related challenge, as well as navigating the intricacies of systems-level policymaking in the education sector more broadly within the region.
In this conversation, MoPSE and DepEd had a candid conversation about what it means to:
- Build a data-driven culture around policymaking
- Address the real challenges and varying needs of decisionsmakers, teachers and learners
- Navigate and align priorities, processes and demands across units within the ministry and its broader system, highlighting lessons learnt that could apply to countries in the region more broadly.
What we heard and learned
As we listened to both ministries, there was a lot of common ground that could essentially serve as a guide for their own policymaking teams’ next steps. Their reflections highlight topical themes such as:
- shifting from compliance to quality
- the discussion around centralised and decentralised governance systems
- the importance of data-informed decision-making
- how governments can create safe, accurate, and inclusive data systems that ensure representation and balance in data collection.
Ensuring that policymaking approaches are anchored to a commitment to quality, rather than merely compliance.
Both ministries of education agreed that in government systems, there tends to be more of a culture of compliance when it comes to policymaking — ticking the right boxes, ensuring processes are strictly followed, without much regard towards the experience of stakeholders that the policy will impact upon its implementation. For example, in the context of the Philippines’ upcoming EdTech Omnibus Policy, it would be easy to be content with completing a simple checklist covering hardware and infrastructure to gauge its success, rather than gauging success through truly understanding teacher and learner experiences with EdTech, and using that to lay the foundations of developing necessary policies.
However, there is a growing realisation and recognition that while ensuring compliance with processes is important, policymaking and implementation must go ‘beyond the checklists’ and must focus on a whole-systems approach to ensuring that the process and human experience of its beneficiaries — and in particular, the teaching and learning quality it intends to nurture — are central elements that guide decision-makers throughout the policymaking process.
The importance of thoughtfully navigating around governance structures to balance contextualisation and national-level alignment
While there has always been a debate around centralisation and decentralisation within governance structures, the conversation highlighted both advantages and disadvantages of each system. Despite this, both ministries agreed that the key importance lies in ensuring that there is a balance between ensuring that there are standards that could be implemented at a national level, with oversight from the national level to ensure harmonisation, but that the contextual and timely support must be remain important to ensure that the diverse needs of the population are met — amongst differing capacities and sometimes local priorities.
Building a data-driven culture within the ministry, and meaningfully encouraging this practice across stakeholders in the system
Both ministries acknowledged the importance of data as a foundation for policy-making. They noted the importance of stakeholders being data-literate and evidence-informed, especially when they have a decision-making role — be it at the local government level or the school-level. Leveraging different kinds of knowledge should be the groundwork for ensuring quality and contextual education policy and provision.
This data-driven approach also extends to good practice of knowledge management within government ministries, especially at times when leadership may often change, so as to ensure that institutional knowledge can be retained, leading to more impactful and sustainable programming.
Redefining stakeholders’ participative role in the policymaking process
Finally, it was acknowledged that there is great value in data gathered from teacher and learner experiences. Wisdom from the field should inform policies, as part of the ministries’ responsibility and accountability to their stakeholders.
Along with the practice of designing tools for psychological safety during data collection, as well as ensuring that data has not been gathered in vain, both ministries were in agreement that stakeholders are partners of decision-makers in the policymaking process. Their perspectives strengthen the process and ground the policies in real-life contexts.
Insights from this conversation will hopefully inform actionable efforts on how ministries can continue the work in policymaking and strengthen the systems that would enable reforms to create the long-lasting impact desired.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to colleagues from the Philippines’ Department of Education, Nicole Reyes and Camille De Luna; from Indonesia’s Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, Dr. Irsyad Zamjani, Esy Andriyani, and Andry Rihardika for the collaboration throughout their respective policy sandboxing processes, contributions during the learning session, as well as within the development of this blog. Thank you also to EdTech Hub colleagues Nimra Afzal, Sangay Thinley, Gita Luz, Jamie Donato, Resiana Rawinda, and Jillian Makungu from the EdTech Hub for supporting this work and for their contributions during the session and throughout the sandboxing process.
This work is part of the portfolio of projects delivered by the ASEAN-UK SAGE programme. The ASEAN-UK SAGE programme is delivered by the British Council and SEAMEO Secretariat, in partnership with EdTech Hub and Australian Council for Education Research (ACER). ASEAN-UK SAGE is an ASEAN cooperation programme funded by UK International Development.
