Our resources thrust participants into the heart of real-world scenarios, from crisis management in the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic to cross-party education reform in Brazil.
Many of our resources are available on The Case Centre distribution platform. Educators who are registered with the site can access free review copies of our case studies, teaching notes, and other materials.
To inquire about our other cases or background materials, please contact us at casecentre@bsg.ox.ac.uk.
Reproducing success? Applying lessons in education reform to Campos dos Goytacazes
The education system in Campos dos Goytacazes (Campos), a municipality of 500,000 inhabitants located in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro state, was badly in need of reform in 2022. The city was prosperous, but its relative wealth had not translated into success in educational results. Campos’s new secretary of education, Marcelo Feres, turned to other Brazilian cities for inspiration, among them Sobral, a municipality being presented in education policy circles as an exemplar of reform. Sobral’s education reforms had resulted in the biggest increase in education scores in the country between 2005 and 2017.
But the path had involved some politically difficult decisions, especially a reorganisation of the school network. This process had involved closing a number of small schools, and consolidating students in fewer, but larger, schools, thus allowing the city to provide single-grade classes and better facilities. Feres knew he would not be able to replicate Sobral’s reforms exactly in the Campos context, yet he believed restructuring the physical network, including closing some small schools might allow the municipality to establish more hours of schooling, improve conditions and help professionalise management, as it had in Sobral. But when a list of 20 schools being considered for closure was leaked to the teachers’ union, Feres found himself in the middle of a growing political storm in which he needed to reassess his strategy to improve Campos’s schools.
- Consider how to apply a model reform in a new political and social context;
- Analyse a model series of education reform policies;
- Develop strategies for sequencing controversial reforms effectively.
Civil service reform in Ghana
In 2014, Nana Agyekum-Dwamena was named Ghana’s Head of Civil Service, tasked with reforming the 14,000-person institution that was widely considered to be plagued by low motivation, inefficiency, and weak performance. Just a few weeks into the job, he was approached with an opportunity from the World Bank, which provisionally offered to fund a multi-year reform programme that Agyekum-Dwamena could design. In many ways, it was a compelling offer: the Civil Service had extremely limited financial resources, yet improving its performance remained a political priority.
However, Agyekum-Dwamena had seen a series of donor-funded reforms fail to deliver since he had joined the civil service in the 1980s. The donor-funded projects often came with high administrative costs, and most had halted when funding ended or a new administration came into office. Agyekum-Dwamena had to decide if he should design a wide-sweeping reform programme to pitch to the development partner, or if he had other levers available for improving performance. For Agyekum-Dwamena, this decision raised a broader question about how he should approach the task of improving the performance of the civil service.
This case is accompanied by an epilogue which describes Agyekum-Dwamena’s decision in 2014 and how he approached reform in the years that followed.
- Learn from historical efforts to improve the performance of government bureaucracies;
- Diagnose and prioritise reform needs in government;
- Generate and critically interrogate ideas for and approaches to reform.
Chile’s balancing act: fiscal responsibility and emergency spending during Covid-19
Over successive governments, Chile had built a strong reputation for fiscal discipline, but recent social unrest and the Covid-19 pandemic had put pressure on the government to relax strict rules on spending. Finance Minister Ignacio Briones needed to determine the level and financing of a substantial new Covid-relief package while ensuring the country remained able to respond to future emergencies and without undermining the country’s already weakening commitment to fiscal responsibility.
This case allows students to explore both the practice and the politics of government accounting.
Please note: this case study is also available as an interactive digital case. To access this version, please email casecentre@bsg.ox.ac.uk.
- Learn, apply and evaluate the principles of accrual-basis accounting in government accounting;
- Understand the challenges and opportunities of building and sustaining a culture of fiscal responsibility;
- Develop strategies for building support for difficult decisions during crises.