Asian Education Podcast
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S3E10 1:28:08

An Interview with Andy Smart

In this episode of the Asian Education Podcast, we are joined by Andy Smart, who is an education and publishing consultant with a background in teaching and educational and children's publishing - with multinational publishers as well as his own children's publishing company. Since 2000 he has worked in several countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, on textbook policy, English and Arabic-medium primary curricula, textbook planning and development, children's reading, and general publishing. This episode focuses on issues related to externally-supported education reform projects in Asia, given his long-term engagement with the World Bank and other international organizations as an external expert.

In 2023, the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel (GEEAP) published a report on 'Smart Buys' for improving learning in low- and middle-income countries. The GEEAP is described as 'an independent, cross-disciplinary body composed of leading education experts from around the world' with a mandate 'to provide succinct, usable, and policy-focused recommendations to support policymakers’ decision-making on education investments in low- and middle-income countries'. We ask Andy to respond to this panel’s claim that textbooks are 'bad buys' (along with salary, libraries and other inputs) - and, more broadly, what it means to talk of 'good' or 'bad' 'buys' in education.

Andy has rich experience working on World Bank projects in Asian countries such as Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Tonga. We ask him to explain the values or vision that informs his work, and to reflect on the challenges involved in working as a consultant for international organisations. Since the World Bank's educational work has been heavily critiqued in comparative education literature, we also ask Andy for his reaction to some of the critiques of education interventions by the World Bank as ‘neoliberal’ or ‘neocolonial’?

In 2018 Andy helped to set up NISSEM.org with other practitioners and academic colleagues to promote better use of textbooks for socio-emotional learning in low-income countries in support of Sustainable Development Goal Target 4.7. In some of their work, Yoko and Ed have warned against UNESCO’s turn to SEL. They discuss some of their concerns and ask Andy to explain NISSEM’s focus on SEL.

Finally, we ask Andy to tell us about an ongoing project he's working on in Tonga, developing teaching materials for children in local schools.

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