F1GD 4430 - Enhancing Human capital: impactful education and training policies in developing countries

***UPDATED for 2025/26***

The knowledge economy drives the world development, and challenges decision-makers in the global South. This course aims at equipping students with knowledge as well as methods on the design and steering of public policies for human capital development in Asia and Africa. This course is built on 20 years of policy design and evaluation in the field of education, training and capacity building across 70 African and Asian countries. The course will address the following topics:

• Policy design in education and training: from needs analysis to policy objectives and action plan.
• Actors mapping in education and training: mapping and interplay with stakeholders, policy users, decision-makers, operators like NGOs) as well as donors.
• Implementing and financing education and training policies: project and budgetary support and other support modalities
• Embedding the gender dimensions into education and training policies.
• Opting for a holistic approach to capital development, the education continuum in sectoral policies.
• Defining national policy in a competitive and globalized knowledge economy, the challenge of higher education for under-sourced countries.
• Steering and monitoring educational policy: logical frameworks, key performance indicators and culture of accountability.
• Ensuring and improving quality to produce tangible change on societies: quality management in education and training policies.
• Balancing risks and opportunities: internationalisation in education at the age of skills circulation.

Each session will include a sequence of short presentations, Q&A, exploration of methods or tools for policy design and evaluation.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of the course, the students will:

• Know how to identify the specific conditions and potential levers to design and implement impactful policies in education and training in the global South.
• Be familiar with a range of tools for policy design and evaluation, relevant for needs analysis, identification of policy strategy and expected impact of education and training policies.
• Develop the capacity to suggest realistic policy orientations taking into account the changing context and permanent fragility of developing countries as well as the evolutions of international aid support.

Professional Skills

• Conduct policy design and reshaping
• Assess risks and mitigation of policy design
• Design Theory of Change of sectoral policy
• Draft stakeholders mapping (institutional positioning and interconnections)
• Use tools to measure qualitative changes (e.g. behavioral change)
• Conduct evidence-based analysis
• Formulate strategic and actionable recommendations

Students are expected to have a basic background in public policy, education, or development studies, ideally through prior coursework (e.g., Education and Development, Public Policy Analysis, Governance in Developing Countries). Interest in with policy design and evaluation tools—such as problem analysis, theory of change, or monitoring and evaluation—is valuable. An interest in education and training systems in the Global South is essential. Relevant experience, such as internships with NGOs or ministries, participation in research projects, or authorship of policy papers on education and development, will be an asset.

Feedback will be provided:

• individually via email within 2 weeks after the assessment and personalized interaction via WhatsApp if needed.
• 15 minutes in class, highlighting key achievements to be shared with the class and room for improvement, after group works and individual assessments.

• Each student will complete two graded assessments and one participation component:

o Individual assignment (50% of final grade): An individually led analysis of a case study prepared in class. Students will choose one case study outline (from up to four options) to be completed around mid-semester.

o Group project (40% of final grade): A collaborative assignment conducted in groups of up to four students, starting four weeks before the end of the semester (approximately three hours of work per student per week for one month). The project will focus on real-world cases, such as drafting a legal framework for a new University for Teacher Education in Senegal, designing impact indicators for entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa, or developing inclusion indicators for LGBTQI+ dimensions in higher education in developing countries.

o Role play (10% of final grade): The role play will consist of a discussion between 3 categories of stakeholders (UN agency, experts and a Donor, the student being broken down in 3 groups). 10% of final average grade.

• In Class Presence: 2 hours a week / 24 hours a semester
• Reading and Preparation for Class: 1 hour a week
• Research and Preparation for Group Work: 20 hours a semester
• Research and Writing for Individual Assessments: 10 hours a semester