Originally published on Oxford Policy Podcast.
In this episode, Nick Fabbri speaks with fellow MPP students Anushka Jadhav and Rafaela Viana about the 2024 Education World Forum, their personal education journeys in India and Brazil respectively, Education Policy in Oxford, and some of the major education policy issues and developments globally. Anushka and Rafaela also reflect on their time at Oxford and in the 2023-24 MPP cohort, and offer advice and inspiration to future students.
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Anushka Jadhav is an educational professional with over seven years of experience, based in Mumbai, India. As a co-founder of an educational trust (NCFW), she has engaged students and institutions in meaningful discussions about gender norms and discrimination. At Whistling Woods International (WWI), Anushka led the curriculum development and served as a faculty member. She also spearheaded India's venture into media and film education for grades 9-12 under the Delhi Board of School Education. As the Creative Director at Gaysi Family since 2016, she has worked extensively to mainstream narratives from the LGBTQIA+ community through diverse initiatives. She has also actively participated in fellowships with change.org and the British Council.
Rafaela Viana dos Santos is from Sao Paulo city, Brazil and in 2021 obtained her undergraduate degree in international relations at the University of Sao Paulo. She has pursued studies and attended conferences in Taiwan, China, and Egypt. Rafaela's four years of professional experience are mainly in the ESG field, including sustainable development finance and government projects. As such, her key policy interests are ESG, sustainable development, China, the third sector, and project management. Likewise, she has extensive experience working in non-profit and non-governmental organisations. Rafaela enjoys travelling, playing with dogs, and watching movies. Rafaela is a Chevening Scholar.
Transcript below ^_^
[Nick Fabbri] (0:00 - 0:28)
A very warm welcome to another episode of the Oxford Policy Podcast. My name is Nick Fabbri and I'm a producer of the show. I'm delighted to welcome Rafaela Viana and Anushka Jadhav to the program.
Today we'll be speaking about education policy, the recent Education World Forum in London, and Anushka and Rafa's reflections on their Master of Public Policy journey and advice for future education leaders. So thank you so much to you both for being here today, it's a pleasure to be speaking with you.
[Rafaela Viana] (0:28 - 0:30)
Thank you Nick. Thank you.
[Nick Fabbri] (0:30 - 0:39)
So Anushka and Rafa, could you please start by introducing yourselves to our listeners and reflecting on what has made you passionate about education and policy in the first place.
[Rafaela Viana] (0:40 - 2:13)
Hello everyone, my name is Rafaela. I'm from Brazil and I've been interested in education because education has been so important throughout my life trajectory. I've been benefiting a lot from scholarship that allowed me to keep in school, but also recover all the learning that I did not have when I was in school because there's a problem that I think is throughout the world right now is that kids are going to school and not learning, and this happened to me.
And so I've been working with sustainable development, sustainable finance, also strategic planning, so I've been working with a broad range of policies. But in all of that, it's really, really important for us to focus on education and ensure that our kids are learning. And then attending to this education group sessions was really important for me so I could understand better on education policies, on what works, what doesn't, and also learn more here throughout the MPP on the politics of implementation.
There's something really important. Sometimes we have the evidence on what works and what doesn't, but the real challenge is how do you implement, how do you scale the solutions? So this is something really important for me, being here in the MPP and working on that topic, even though I didn't want to specialize and work throughout my life with education policy.
But as a generalist, having this knowledge on education is really important to what I want to do in the future.
[Anushka Jadhav] (2:14 - 3:38)
I'm Anushka from India. I've been in the education sector for about a decade now, so that's a long time. I ran a non-profit for a few years, where I did workshops on gender and education around the country.
I worked with the government in Delhi. I worked with for-profit sectors and for-profit education organizations in Bombay for a bit. I did some advocacy work on the side.
So I've done a lot of work in different aspects of education, including both formal education, but also what we mean by education broadly in terms of education through entertainment, through the arts, specifically performative arts, through theater, through music. So that's sort of been my space of passion. When I think about education, I think of it as one of the most fundamental ways in which you can teach people, a sort of really pivotal transformative space, and that has become now my space of transformation and change.
So that's really why I'm interested in education. There's so many things you can do with it. And I realized that the one thing that I had not done in India had been working directly with education policy.
I've worked with policies handed down to me, but I haven't really worked on policy itself, and I haven't done that much work with organizations outside of India. So those are sort of the gaps that I felt existed in my experience. That's why I'm here.
[Nick Fabbri] (3:39 - 4:22)
Well, thank you very much for those really amazing introductions. And it's always so cool to just reflect on, I guess, everyone's sort of diverse backgrounds from the MPP, all our students. We've got 150 students from 62 countries around the world, and you learn something new every day and see how different, I guess, policy and government looks from, you know, depending on where you're standing on the globe.
But if you could each, in your respective personal stories, talk to us a bit about what education looked like for you in your hometowns and cities in Brazil and in India, respectively, like growing up through primary, secondary, and then obviously going to university. What was it like actually going through the system and losing your memories from going through that educational development?
[Anushka Jadhav] (4:22 - 6:23)
I think, I mean, like you pointed out, India has a massive amount of disparity. And so when you talk about educational experiences, I think they take on so many different shades. I think Rafa pointed this out in sort of her introduction, where she talked about schooling and not learning, which is a big problem in India, where we have near universal primary school enrollment, and then students still don't have basic foundational skills.
Sort of the divide between rural and urban schools, between private and public schools, between English language schools and regional language schools. There's a lot there that changes experiences of students and the kinds of access they have to sort of quality education. In fact, the What Works Hub for Global Education right here at BSG does a lot of very interesting work in that area.
So for me, thankfully, I had a very good college education, not such a good school education, but that coupled, the bad, not great school education, but coupling that with sort of parents who'd had the privilege of an education also, who could sort of provide me with some support at home, meant that my college experience was very different. I had access to certain colleges because of this home experience. I went to sort of St. Xavier's in Mumbai, which was very good humanities college. And they didn't really have a very high fee. They were sort of funded publicly. And so that meant that a lot of different kinds of students could get there.
And so all of these sort of experiences meant that I was able to have a pretty good post sort of graduate experience, which sort of allowed me to step out and start a non-profit for a few years. So I guess, yeah, when you're talking about education in India, there are such few spaces that allow you to have a quality education that there end up being lots of disparities in the experiences people have. Then there's caste and there's class and there's gender, all of which makes it even more complicated.
[Nick Fabbri] (6:24 - 6:31)
And I suppose, you know, taking all that into account, you really appreciate just how transformative education can be as well. Agatha?
[Rafaela Viana] (6:31 - 7:35)
So I think I see it in the other way of the spectrum. So I was born and raised in a favela in Brazil. So in Sao Paulo city, that is one of the biggest cities in the world and in Latin America.
So I grew up seeing the inequalities in my day to day life. My parents always wanted to incentivize us through education. So they would enroll us in every free course that was available.
This is how I learned Spanish and then English. But going back to my experience in the school, there was a lot of times that I was in school, but I was not learning because the professors were not there or because there was not effective delivery of the classes. And then my parents were always saying to us, oh, you should do university, you should go to the university.
And then I heard about public universities in Brazil. They're like one of the best universities and they're for free. But most of the time, people that go to this type of universities, are people that had private education because they learn more, they're more educated to pass the entrance exams.
[Nick Fabbri] (7:36 - 7:43)
So those private schools are kind of more resources, you pay more fees to get in. So I guess they're less equitable for the general population, right?
[Rafaela Viana] (7:43 - 8:27)
Yeah. So throughout my life, I attended public school. So it was really important.
I still advocate for the government to invest heavily on education, but we still have to improve a lot, the learning in schools. And then I went to University of Sao Paulo, that is one of the best, not in America. And this also changed the way I view the world and also my role in it and the changes that I could do.
So I'm still an outlier, unfortunately, and that I want to change the scenario. And I know that education is key, is a key for changing and having more people like me studying abroad or just studying and changing the policymaking.
[Nick Fabbri] (8:28 - 9:15)
Yeah. Extraordinary reflections. And I think one commonality, even though Brazil and India are such different countries, there are a lot of commonalities, you know, in the sense of both being, I suppose, post-colonial nations, nascent nations, both extremely large populations, but also a lot of income inequality across society as well.
And the way that that's kind of reflected in the education system, almost like a stratification socially of people who have opportunities earlier on and how that kind of determines, you know, life outcomes. And it must be very humbling for you both to be, you know, from different parts of the globe, but both to be here at, I guess, Oxford University, which is in some ways people see as the apogee of education. This is, you know, the greatest university in the world.
And we might argue about that, but...
[Rafaela Viana] (9:15 - 9:49)
Yes, I think India and Brazil have, unfortunately, a lot of challenges that people face. Yeah, but in the case of Brazil, I guess when you look at inequalities, we also have to look at the race. So because of the colonial past, people like white, people considered white in Brazil, they still have a lot of access to privilege, such as good and quality education, while black people are still suffering with a lot of socioeconomic inequalities.
So I think this is also key when you are looking to the Brazilian case.
[Nick Fabbri] (9:49 - 10:19)
Cool. Well, coming to the MPP, and I guess your work on education here, Anushka, you're one of the leaders of the MPP education cluster. So putting some of those personal experiences that you'd had into practice and addressing some of those professional gaps you identified earlier in your introduction with regards to your experience in the sector.
So could you talk to us a bit about the concept of a cluster within the school led by students and how it was set up and what you and your colleagues did throughout the year as leaders?
[Anushka Jadhav] (10:20 - 11:33)
I think one of the things coming into the MPP was that everybody in the MPP is a professional. They've all worked in various fields for a good five to 10 years at least. And so it's not so much students in a program as professionals taking a break and getting some skills in areas they've identified for themselves, which makes the experience such an interesting one because everybody's bringing their experiences into the classroom, into the cohort, into the space.
And there's so much that you can learn then from each other. And so you have students that are interested in similar areas and they get together and use that wealth of experience to create sort of conversations that either are happening outside and they want to replicate or aren't happening anywhere else and they want to start. And so that becomes a very exciting space for innovation.
And that's sort of what happened with education. We had sort of so many people with such wonderful experiences from their different countries thinking about similar issues. Like Rafa and I are talking about problems in India and Brazil that we relate on.
We had somebody from Ghana who was talking about issues there and sort of connecting on these deeper problems that we're all facing in our individual countries.
[Nick Fabbri] (11:34 - 11:41)
And how did you find each other at the start of the year? Did you sort of just put the call out, put a sign up, say I'm interested in education, let's chat?
[Anushka Jadhav] (11:41 - 11:48)
I mean, you probably remember this. We basically did many introductions for the whole month that we were here.
[Nick Fabbri] (11:48 - 11:49)
Speed dating, speed friending.
[Anushka Jadhav] (11:49 - 12:23)
So it was just that. It was meeting people for coffee, lunch, dinner, intense socializing, I think, which got you to understand what people are doing. And Rachel, honestly, has been, Rachel Hinton, who's sort of a policy fellow here at the school, has been a wonderful support.
She brought us together also, and she had these wonderful conversations with us about things we were interested in, helped us reach out to people that we could bring to the school to have conversations with, sort of helped us organize a lot of the talks we wanted to do, a lot of the panels we wanted to do.
[Nick Fabbri] (12:24 - 12:24)
Brilliant.
[Anushka Jadhav] (12:24 - 12:39)
So yeah, I think one of the things that was really fun was we spoke to the Institute of Education at UCL and brought some people over, because this is just such an exciting time to be able to form relationships with education leaders all over the world. Brilliant.
[Rafaela Viana] (12:40 - 12:49)
Yeah. Thank you very much for sending this. You, Eric, Rachel, thank you very much, and the others, Maurice, you, Sharad.
Thank you very much. It was really, really helpful.
[Nick Fabbri] (12:49 - 13:06)
So could you talk a bit about, I guess, the benefits of contributing to this cluster in particular, but maybe more broadly as well, from a leadership and professional development perspective? And do you think that this initiative might be a model for similar policy interest areas for future MPP cohorts as well?
[Anushka Jadhav] (13:06 - 13:59)
I think so, absolutely. I think you get as much out of the program as you put in. Yes, there are fantastic structured classes that we have, but I think the big wealth, and I'm assuming you'll agree too, because we've spoken about this before, the big wealth of the program is the cohort and the experiences they bring.
And so what you're interested in, exploring that and exploring that with other people and finding spaces to have the conversations you've been wanting to have and making those happen. That's what I think this year is for. We were all interested in talking about education and evidence quite a bit.
And so we sort of found a way to make a panel about that happen. We got somebody from World Bank, got somebody from UNESCO IEP, and sort of made that happen. And that was such an exciting experience.
I think this is a fantastic time to think about all of those wishlist items you have and wishlist conversations you want to have. And somebody at the school will help you make them happen.
[Nick Fabbri] (13:59 - 14:24)
And be proactive about making it happen too. So coming to Rafa, you were among the MPP students who had a really unique opportunity to participate in the Education World Forum in London recently. The Education World Forum is the largest annual gathering of education and skills ministers in the world.
So could you talk to us a bit about that World Forum and what the focus of the summit was this year?
[Rafaela Viana] (14:24 - 15:37)
So I guess one of the key things you already mentioned to us is the scale of the Education World Forum. I think this year they brought 122 ministers and people from 124 countries that were engaged in discussions on education. So it was really nice to hear their perspectives and what they have been doing.
Another thing that makes the Forum special is because of the importance of the topics that are being discussed. So ranging from emerging challenges such as the use of AI in the classroom to more traditional ones like how to track and retain teachers. This year, the team was encouraging AI understanding, building human relationships and resilience, and accelerating climate action.
How should we prioritize policy and implementation for stronger, bolder, better education? You see, it was a very impactful and useful discussion. I think not everyone has an answer for this question.
But it's really nice to put our inputs, put our thoughts out there and discuss. And there's a lot of food for thought.
[Nick Fabbri] (15:37 - 15:54)
So there were big plenary events. So there'd be keynote speakers and then you'd have smaller kind of working rooms and things. How did it work structurally?
It's a huge thing to have so many education ministers and skills ministers too because skills and training is also a massive part of education and industry as well.
[Rafaela Viana] (15:54 - 16:03)
It was a three-day forum, right? So we also have panels that were running at the same time. So you could choose which panel you wanted to attend.
[Anushka Jadhav] (16:05 - 16:21)
What else? We definitely had a lot of meetings between ministers, like you said. I think one of the exciting things was that this is also one of the few places that ministers can meet each other and exchange ideas about what's happening in their countries.
So it was a very exciting space to be able to see that kind of collaboration.
[Nick Fabbri] (16:22 - 16:24)
Much nicer than the COVID times where we're all over Zoom as well.
[Anushka Jadhav] (16:25 - 16:41)
I know, I know, I know. And just like watching people find each other for coffee, find each other in corridors. I think, what are they called, brush pies?
Brush pies. Just to be able to witness that. It was very inspiring, I think, to see so many people from so many parts of the world.
And the energy.
[Rafaela Viana] (16:42 - 16:57)
I think people were very excited and happy to be there. So it was really nice to experience that from ministers and high-level bureaucrats that are engaged in education and want to improve the reality of their context. Yeah.
[Nick Fabbri] (16:57 - 17:26)
It's so interesting when you were saying about having 122 ministers and representative countries as well, 124 countries. And some of the issues you covered, like AI, right? So really futures-focused stuff, which is transforming education.
But then you've also got the, really like bread and butter elementary education issues, such as like retention of teachers, teacher quality, just access to basic materials as well in the classroom. Like this whole question of, I don't know if truancy is the right word, making sure people attend school.
[Anushka Jadhav] (17:26 - 17:26)
Yeah.
[Nick Fabbri] (17:26 - 17:29)
So how do you kind of like reconcile that huge spread of issues?
[Anushka Jadhav] (17:30 - 18:22)
I think one of the exciting things about the EWF is the way that Gavin Dykes organises each of the sessions. So he's sort of one of the people behind the EWF at Dominic. And I remember I was talking to him about one of the ways in which sessions are structured.
And he was talking about how each of them has a completely different kind of discourse it's trying to promote. So for example, you'll have plenaries, you'll have these large panel discussions, which will have unstructured conversations. You'll have this negotiation space, you'll have meeting rooms, you'll have small group discussions.
And the different kinds of conversations that emerge and to watch those, for all of us students who were there for that sort of couple of days was very interesting to see that kinds of different conversations that emerge in different kinds of spaces. But in that one forum. That's really interesting.
We also thought about like having a networking area.
[Rafaela Viana] (18:22 - 18:31)
So while we were having our meals, we could also talk to each other, meeting new people. So it was really well thought the structure of the forum.
[Anushka Jadhav] (18:31 - 18:43)
Yeah. And some of I think our mini interviews happened in these networking spaces where we found somebody to talk to and quickly ask them these questions about areas they're working in and found some really wonderful material.
[Rafaela Viana] (18:43 - 19:08)
Yeah. So throughout the event, we could do these interviews, you know, how do you using evidence in their policymaking process, right? And we also attend the panels to carefully analyze the proceedings to identify success areas and areas that we can improve to the next forum.
So we carefully thought and analyzed that and we sent to the EWF organizers with some suggestions.
[Nick Fabbri] (19:09 - 19:13)
Amazing. And how many MPP students actually joined you on this outing?
[Anushka Jadhav] (19:13 - 19:17)
We were about six or five there. Yeah, about six or five.
[Nick Fabbri] (19:17 - 19:31)
Amazing. Yeah. And Rafa, what would be some of your biggest highlights from the forum?
Like what was your main takeaway, I guess? You know, you had your own personal and policy interest in education before I guess joining the cluster and BSG as well. But like what were your takeaways from the forum?
[Rafaela Viana] (19:33 - 20:47)
I think one of my key takeaways is the implementation. So I think everyone in each context have different implementation challenges. So we have always should be innovative and think how we can overcome these barriers.
So it's not only about going to a forum and bringing all these are the evidence of what works for education, but it's also about thinking on how to overcome the challenges to implement this evidence into policymaking. So I think this was key. Another highlight for me is because I was really, I felt really, really happy and proud to see Ivo Gomes.
He is a mayor of Sobral, a city in Serra, Brazil. So he was sharing the key takeaways of, he was sharing the key takeaways of what they have been doing to improve not only schooling, but learning in this small city in Brazil. So as a Brazilian, I recognize that there's a lot of work to be done to improve learning, but also seeing Sobral as a successful case study, it hit my heart with hope that we will be able to escape the solution not only nationally in the country, but also to other countries.
So it was really inspiring to see a resilient policymaker there and sharing the experiences.
[Nick Fabbri] (20:47 - 21:00)
I think I read about the mayor of the small town in Brazil, right? I think it was an article you wrote and published online on BSG's website. Yeah.
Okay, cool. And you actually got to meet with this mayor and have a chat about, wow, that's so unique.
[Rafaela Viana] (21:00 - 21:06)
Yes, he's really nice and he's really open. And we also interviewed him. So Eric did the interview.
[Nick Fabbri] (21:07 - 21:08)
Who hasn't Eric interviewed?
[Rafaela Viana] (21:09 - 21:24)
But he also shared for everyone in one of the plenaries. And people could ask him like, oh, so in my context, this happens. How do you overcome?
So it was really nice to see like this shared of knowledges, challenges. It was really nice.
[Nick Fabbri] (21:25 - 21:39)
And Anushka, what were your, I guess, biggest highlights from the forum as well? And I guess, you know, expanding beyond what you maybe took away from it. What did you kind of discern as some of the biggest education and skills issues being discussed at the moment globally?
[Anushka Jadhav] (21:40 - 23:05)
I think one of the sort of conversations that stayed with me was this conversation about balancing higher education and foundational learning. And this was about sort of both funding, but also resources in general. And that really stuck with me because I've worked in early childhood care and in higher education and I've found myself struggling with where it is that I want to put personal resources.
So it was interesting to have that conversation at a larger scale. And I think one of the things that the panelists sort of touched upon was this idea of good in terms of like public good and private good. And where does that come from?
And just this idea that when we talk about early care and early learning, a lot of times it's care centric, which is important, yes. But early education is also education. And how do you think about education in that space instead of just thinking about it as care?
And how do you then instrumentalize it? How do you then create mechanisms where you can regulate it? How do you create monitoring mechanisms?
A lot of times when you talk about education at other levels, you take for granted that there are standards for education that will exist. But when you talk about early childhood care and education, we don't often think of standards that you can provide both bodies, regulation bodies, parents and teachers. And so how are you supposed to know what it is that we're looking for when we don't create these sort of standards?
[Nick Fabbri] (23:05 - 23:09)
Extraordinary. And so early education being like age, what, two or three, isn't it?
[Anushka Jadhav] (23:10 - 23:12)
It would be preschool. Yeah, absolutely.
[Nick Fabbri] (23:12 - 23:17)
They said that they're some of the most formative years in terms of determining life and educational outcomes.
[Anushka Jadhav] (23:17 - 23:45)
Exactly. And the idea that most countries don't take them seriously, that a lot of countries don't necessarily have compulsory education at that age. So most countries that have any right to education will usually have them from, at max, preschool, usually foundation learning, usually elementary school.
We don't really have enough conversation happening about early childhood care and education. So that, I think, really stuck with me from that conversation.
[Nick Fabbri] (23:45 - 23:54)
And what about the major challenges globally? Like, was there much discussion on, I guess, the return or maybe the years lost educationally to the pandemic?
[Anushka Jadhav] (23:54 - 23:55)
Yeah, absolutely.
[Nick Fabbri] (23:55 - 23:56)
Other kinds of things like that?
[Anushka Jadhav] (23:56 - 24:59)
I think that's something that now most countries are having to contend with. This idea that there has been a lot of loss of learning that happened during the pandemic and this is something that now we have to start thinking about when we're talking about all of the generations that came after that and all of the generations that were in the education system but sort of got left out for a bit during the pandemic. One of the things that we've actually talked about even in the school quite a bit has been sort of, how do we use programs that were already existing as interventions and how do we adapt them for cases of emergency?
So we were talking a little bit about sort of, for example, if you look at teaching at the right level, how do you make sure that that can happen in spaces where students are not in schools? So there's been a lot of very interesting discussion about how do you modify existing programs that we know work, that we know are possible to scale, that we know are possible to adapt to different contexts and how do you take those and try and see how can you apply them?
[Nick Fabbri] (24:59 - 25:12)
One of the interesting ones we looked at in evidence, which you I think mentioned before about implementation, was that case study of, I can't remember where exactly, was it Rwanda maybe, of like they're giving their little laptops in schools?
[Anushka Jadhav] (25:12 - 25:16)
Oh, one laptop a child. That went quite badly.
[Nick Fabbri] (25:17 - 25:46)
Do you want to sort of, briefly sort of speak about that and maybe use that as an illustrative example of the importance of education and measurement and adapting things to local context as well? Because there was basically like, there was this idea that you transform education in a country which hadn't gone through a lot of technological and economic and social development by essentially dropping in little laptops per school. Every child will have a laptop, but it didn't really work.
[Anushka Jadhav] (25:46 - 26:23)
Yeah, I think, yeah, I mean, I'm glad you bring that up. It is something we've been talking about. A large part of the EWF was also talking about how do we use evidence to inform policymaking?
How do we use evidence to inform decisions about what kinds of interventions should sort of take place? Just so that something like this doesn't happen, where you don't end up using a lot of public funds on programs that have no evidence of working. So yeah, I think, I mean, I think that example is a good example of making sure that public funds are used in spaces where evidence is shown that there is impact.
[Nick Fabbri] (26:23 - 26:25)
Like a dividend that can actually be pointed to.
[Anushka Jadhav] (26:25 - 26:42)
Yeah, and I think just thinking through theories have changed a little bit because I feel like a lot of times we think of ICTs as these magic solutions, which they're not. We need to start thinking about stakeholders in education and how ICT can, yes, support stakeholders in education, but that can't be the solution.
[Nick Fabbri] (26:42 - 26:43)
ICT, information communication.
[Anushka Jadhav] (26:43 - 26:59)
Information communication technologies, yes. As much of my benefit as Alice's. Yes, absolutely.
We tend to, this is a problem which, where we use abbreviations for no reason. Thank you for pointing that out. Yeah.
[Rafaela Viana] (27:01 - 27:01)
Yeah.
[Nick Fabbri] (27:02 - 27:03)
Can I jump in here for a moment?
[Rafaela Viana] (27:04 - 28:09)
Yeah, I was just thinking that it also shows like there's no one solution that fits all, but also the importance of the context. So you have to think about what is happening in that location. Would they have, for instance, internet or energy that will allow them to connect with the peer?
I think in the sober case, the use of evidence was really important. So once Ivo was a mayor, he just did an evaluation to all kids to know like what was the, actually the real level of learning. And after that, he had like a very clear map of the problems and then, oh, kids are not learning or they are supposed to have learned that.
They just learned like less. So then he started to adapt the material and the teaching so they could bring these kids to learn what they should have done. And also like one of the key things when I talk about context is that I think they were able to see that most of the school directors, they were appointed politically.
[Nick Fabbri] (28:10 - 28:10)
Really?
[Rafaela Viana] (28:10 - 28:13)
So the reasons they were there was like just for political flavor.
[Nick Fabbri] (28:14 - 28:14)
Not because of their expertise?
[Rafaela Viana] (28:15 - 28:20)
Yes. So he had the political will to change that.
[Nick Fabbri] (28:20 - 28:21)
That's amazing.
[Rafaela Viana] (28:21 - 28:23)
And this is really important.
[Nick Fabbri] (28:23 - 28:37)
I think we should give some of these tips to our friend Giancarlo, who's running to be mayor in Cabo de Uva in Brazil. But did you ask this mayor, I can't remember his name, sorry, but did you ask the mayor, I guess, or get an understanding of how, yeah, Gomez?
[Rafaela Viana] (28:38 - 28:38)
Ivo Gomez.
[Nick Fabbri] (28:39 - 29:12)
Did you get an understanding of how Ivo Gomez sort of took this approach as a policy maker? Because it seems quite rare that, you know, they would have such a focus on monitoring evaluation and actually working with practitioners, but also recognizing some of the governance issues as well in terms of, you know, the quality of the appointees and those sort of executive positions. What does it take for a policymaker to take this kind of good approach to education reform you just mentioned?
Because often it like depends on having a good mayor, right? Or a good like premier of a state or a good president or something, but yeah.
[Anushka Jadhav] (29:13 - 29:18)
I think it goes back to the need for having a strong bureaucracy, doesn't it? Because you can't.
[Nick Fabbri] (29:18 - 29:19)
State capacity.
[Anushka Jadhav] (29:19 - 29:22)
State capacity. Yeah.
[Nick Fabbri] (29:22 - 30:09)
Very good. Cool. So we'll move towards the last couple of questions.
Notably, the forum was almost extended to Oxford University for a fourth day with the education cluster organizing a number of speaking events at the Blavatnik School and opening it up to MPP students. So this allowed our colleagues to join fireside chats with the World Bank's Global Director for Education, Luis Benveniste, and UNESCO's Director of the International Institute for Educational Planning, Martin Benavides. So could you reflect on the importance of industry exposure for improving learning outcomes for the MPP cohort beyond what we just generally covering in our class and our usual curriculum?
So like what's the benefit of, I guess, interacting with practitioners?
[Anushka Jadhav] (30:10 - 31:58)
I mean, I think interacting with practitioners gives you sort of a very contemporary idea of what's happening in these spaces, right? Although I don't want to say that that's only happening with practitioners from outside BSG because I feel like the school makes it sort of a point to bring in practitioners at all points. But because there's such a diversity of interests and such a diversity of areas of experience that we all have, that the school doesn't, can't actually bring everybody in.
And so often these sort of conversations become a way of you bringing in the specific conversations you want to have. That being said, I think one of the exciting conversations that stayed with me, in fact, Luis Benveniste said this, where he was kind of talking about the need for humility when using evidence in education, which is such a, I think for me, new idea. I haven't really heard anybody talk about the need for humility.
And he was telling us the story about going in as a representative of World Bank and sort of going into this country and trying to implement an education reform, which is sort of steeped in evidence and seeing people there sort of have a reform of their own, which wasn't necessarily something that, as the World Bank, they had proposed or had researched or had much of evidence on and sort of being a little confused about why this was happening, but taking a moment to sit with it, taking a moment to try and understand local context and then understanding that this was actually very relevant to peacekeeping efforts in the nation, which are then relevant to successful education reform. And because they took a moment to sit with it and had the humility to not try and interrupt things as sort of newcomers into a space.
[Nick Fabbri] (31:58 - 31:59)
Be top-down.
[Anushka Jadhav] (31:59 - 32:16)
Exactly, not try and be top-down. I think that, to me, was a very interesting story of just trying to understand local context and trying to understand there are knowledge systems that are different from your own and that while you bring evidence, there is also evidence in different sources and being sort of conscious of that.
[Rafaela Viana] (32:16 - 32:47)
I would also add that I think it was really nice to have informal conversations. Of course, there are some stories that I cannot share here. It was very nice to just ask some questions and demystify some of the things, like some career paths and challenges.
So it was really nice to have this kind of informal conversation in which we can develop more trust and feel better and feel more comfortable to ask some questions. So it was really nice having them here.
[Nick Fabbri] (32:47 - 33:01)
And they were more kind of, I guess, open and willing to share the successes and pitfalls and struggles of their own career journey and some of the difficulties that they might not present to an audience of several thousand, for instance.
[Rafaela Viana] (33:01 - 33:29)
Because we're not talking only with the representative of the World Bank. We're talking with a policymaker, with a person that is also advocating for education. So there was a difference now.
When the person is a speaker, a guest speaker, I think you bring more data, you bring more evidence, you bring more work related for that institution that you're representing. But when it's an informal setting, we could talk about a range of topics that are really important.
[Nick Fabbri] (33:30 - 33:45)
Brilliant. Another activity that the education cluster organised was an institutional exchange with the education department at University College London. Could you talk a bit about how this worked and some of the benefits of intervarsity exchange?
[Anushka Jadhav] (33:47 - 34:30)
Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think this was born out of most of us being fascinated by the work that the Institute of Education does and the fantastic researchers that come out of there. And I think one of the things we were all chatting about during those lunchtime meetings where we were talking about what we wanted to do was that while we're here trying to form relationships early on with policymakers from around the world, what would be exciting is to form relationships with researchers from around the world.
And that's kind of how we decided to go to the Institute of Education and meet some of the students who are working in education and are doing research in education to form sort of early relationships and sort of learn a little bit more from each other.
[Nick Fabbri] (34:30 - 34:35)
That's brilliant. I hope it's a model that kind of gets handed on to the next generation of MPPs.
[Rafaela Viana] (34:36 - 34:40)
I would love that. Yeah. We hope they keep caring for it.
Yeah.
[Nick Fabbri] (34:40 - 34:41)
Keep the dream alive.
[Rafaela Viana] (34:41 - 34:42)
Keep the dream alive.
[Nick Fabbri] (34:42 - 34:50)
With that, we'll come to our final question. Our time here at Oxford and the Blavatnik School of Government is coming to an end.
[Rafaela Viana] (34:50 - 34:51)
No, don't mention that.
[Nick Fabbri] (34:52 - 35:04)
Well, maybe it's really over depending on how you look at it. We finished classes two weeks ago and we've got, well, most assessments are done. We've got one summer internship now.
Where are you both, what are you both up to over the summer break for your project?
[Rafaela Viana] (35:05 - 35:08)
So I'm going to Peru, to the Amazon.
[Nick Fabbri] (35:10 - 35:10)
To the Amazon?
[Rafaela Viana] (35:10 - 35:11)
Yes.
[Nick Fabbri] (35:11 - 35:11)
I said that.
[Rafaela Viana] (35:12 - 35:41)
Yeah, in Quito, Loreto. So it will be really nice. I've been working with the Oxford SDG Impact Lab.
They have a partnership with another company that has been doing this work in the Amazon, observing the forest, and also creating jobs for the local communities. And they want us to create a framework so they can assess the impact they're having towards the SDGs. So it will be really nice.
I will be going to Peru for three weeks.
[Nick Fabbri] (35:41 - 35:43)
Your Spanish lessons will come in handy.
[Rafaela Viana] (35:43 - 35:48)
Yes. No more portuñol. We'll improve my Spanish, hopefully.
[Nick Fabbri] (35:49 - 35:50)
Anushka?
[Anushka Jadhav] (35:51 - 36:11)
I am staying here for a little bit longer. I'm working with this organization called Learning Generation Initiative. They're based all over the place, but they do really interesting work in education.
And I am sort of helping them bring gender as a focus area into their work and try and see how do you make your programs more gender inclusive. So that's exciting.
[Nick Fabbri] (36:12 - 36:31)
Yeah, that sounds really, really incredible, what you're both up to over the break. And we've got a few more months and weeks here at Oxford, so until we're officially kicked out, I think, in mid-September. But yeah, so do you have any sort of parting words of advice to future cohorts and also to people who are thinking about applying to the MPP but might be sitting on the fence?
[Anushka Jadhav] (36:32 - 37:07)
I mean, I think it was for me the most special year. I've been wanting to come back into higher ed again for a while now, and I can't think of a better way to have done it. I mean, people that are coming in, I would say that really sort of latch on to this experience.
I know that a lot of us had imposter syndrome in the beginning, and I would say, I don't know, everybody keeps saying this, but I feel like I need to repeat it, that I would say don't waste your time on that because there's such little time that we have here. There's so much you want to do, and it goes by so quickly. I just say really dive into the experience and do everything you want to do.
Yeah.
[Rafaela Viana] (37:10 - 38:44)
I think Mavadnik School and also Oxford as a whole offers a lot of opportunities, really, really. A lot of opportunities, and sometimes can be overwhelming because we normally have the formal, so we want to do everything, and if we don't do it, we feel bad. So I think my first piece of advice is don't feel bad.
Try to minimise your formal. Be strategic on what you want to do. Probably do something new, or if you already know, like, oh, I want to work with education, so go for it.
So what I mean is there's a lot of opportunities. It's impossible to do all of that. So just enjoy and try to pick up the ones that you like the most.
And if you're not sure if you should apply for the MBP or not, I would say get in contact with us. We are open to share experiences, and the course is very broad, which is really nice because it brings people from all over the areas. So we have classmates that did medicine.
We have classmates that specialize in education. So you have all the ranges of the spectrum, and people often say, oh, one of the key things of the MBP is the people, and it is indeed. Not only the students, but also the professors and the staff that is always very welcoming.
And we have also all the clusters here at the Bhuvanik School.
[Nick Fabbri] (38:45 - 38:46)
So we have school-run clusters.
[Rafaela Viana] (38:46 - 39:09)
Yes, for instance, the Workforce for Education. We also have the GoLab. So it's really nice to interact with them.
So there's a lot of opportunities, but try to pick some of them because the MBP schedule is also very demanding. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it's demanding, but it's been a blast.
There's a lot of opportunities. I've done so much in one year. I cannot believe it.
[Nick Fabbri] (39:10 - 39:24)
Yes, well, some final quickfire questions. This interview was meant to be the last question like five ago, but I'll keep staying past 5 p.m. on a Friday. But who was the first person either of you met on the course?
Who was your first MBP person you met?
[Rafaela Viana] (39:25 - 39:46)
Oh, for me, I think it was Tom Hobertson. We sit next to each other in the very first day. So there was this empty seat, and I was like, oh, is it available?
And he was like, oh, is it for you? I was like, oh, amazing. Then we started to laugh and having this engaging conversation.
And that's been like this with every person in the MBP.
[Anushka Jadhav] (39:47 - 40:00)
I think it was Giancarlo. He might have been the first person I met. He was probably the first person I also spoke to.
We were in the same college, and he texted me and was like, are you at St. Peter's? I was like, yes. So, yeah, I think Giancarlo.
[Nick Fabbri] (40:00 - 40:05)
Brilliant. And favorite place to dine out here in Oxford? Your favorite restaurant or bar?
[Anushka Jadhav] (40:06 - 40:15)
Oh, St. Noodle's. It's this fantastic noodle place in the center of the city. They don't take card for some reason.
It's a cash only place.
[Nick Fabbri] (40:15 - 40:16)
That's why you know it's good.
[Anushka Jadhav] (40:16 - 40:27)
It's wonderful. I feel like that's the one thing about the UK that everybody from around the world has brought fantastic food here. So their food is fantastic, and it's here.
And it's great.
[Rafaela Viana] (40:28 - 40:40)
I really love the Gloucester Green market. Every time I go there, there's so many food stands. And then every time I pick something, I never regret.
Everything is amazing and perfect.
[Anushka Jadhav] (40:41 - 40:51)
We have Frank's curries at Gloucester Green. I feel like he'll kill me if I don't mention him. Oh, my gosh, the fish curries he makes are beautiful.
So I will mention the Brazilian, sir.
[Rafaela Viana] (40:51 - 40:53)
And try the pastel.
[Nick Fabbri] (40:54 - 41:01)
Final, final question is favorite season. We've had four seasons in one year here. What's been your favorite and why?
[Anushka Jadhav] (41:02 - 41:20)
I guess autumn because we don't really have that in India. And it's really everything the books tell you. It's beautiful.
But I have to say my favorite thing about the UK is the grey skies. This is the hill I will die on. I love the grey skies.
[Rafaela Viana] (41:21 - 41:51)
So we're in the opposite of the spectrum again. For me, May has been the best month so far. So I think it was spring.
So the weather was really nice. The sky was blue with a lot of sunlight. And also the sun is setting at nine.
So it was really amazing. I could just enjoy the whole day. And also do a lot of outdoors activities.
So I think spring was really nice.
[Nick Fabbri] (41:51 - 41:56)
Brilliant. What a happy note to end on. Well, thank you so much for your time, Afafa and Anushka.
It's been a pleasure to speak with you.
[Rafaela Viana] (41:56 - 42:00)
Thank you, Ned. Thank you, everyone who's listening. Yeah, thank you, everybody who's listening.
[Nick Fabbri] (42:00 - 42:02)
And you can follow us on...
[Rafaela Viana] (42:03 - 42:05)
You can follow me on Instagram.
[Nick Fabbri] (42:06 - 42:14)
Follow her. I'm going to link this. I can't remember our Instagram handle, but you'll find us there.
Thank you.