Members of the GBA Steering Committee contribute to the REACH Trust Fund, which supports efforts to build evidence on and operational knowledge of results-based financing in education through its grant programs and knowledge-sharing activities.
In May of 2020, REACH released a report titled: Cambodia - Can Transparency and Incentives for Community Participation Increase the Supply of Textbooks to Schools?
In it, authors detail a Track and Trace intervention designed to address various weaknesses in the book supply chain in Cambodia. The intervention introduced a new IT-based system that tracked requests for books, their distribution, and their receipt by schools. The intervention included non-financial rewards to School Support Committees that successfully used the system to report the books received and whether they were being used in the classroom.
The findings:
The intervention increased the efficiency of the process of ordering books.
Accuracy under the system also increased.
School Support Committees responded well to the new system.
The government has enthusiastically adopted the Track and Trace system.
Delays in government procurement of books delayed the overall delivery timeline.
Lessons learned:
Transparent data is important to make the book supply chain more efficient and effective.
Even well-designed systems require users to receive extensive training.
The results-based-financing for distributors is expected to be adopted in future.
Simplification of the Track and Trace system will be necessary before it is scaled up nationwide.