Only a select number of school-level accountability initiatives in low- and middle-income countries have reduced corruption; improved managerial, parental, and teacher effort; and led to more efficient targeting of reforms and resources. These limited successes, too, appear to be context-specific and difficult to replicate. It is not enough to put information in the public domain and hope that it enhances accountability, especially since marginalized parents and communities have the least amount of time, resources, or influence to take up the reins of structural change. Information interventions need to consider carefully the audience, design, and presumed causal pathway to improved service delivery.

Technology, greed, a lack of clear rules and norms, hyper-competitiveness and a certain amount of corruption have resulted in confusion and anarchy in the world of scientific communication. Not too long ago, scientific publication was largely in the hands of university publishers and non-profit scientific societies, most of which were controlled by the academic community. The issues involved are complex – how to manage technology, accommodate the expansion of scientific production, rationalise peer review, break the monopoly of the multinationals and, of great importance, instil a sense of ethics and realistic expectations into the academic community itself.

There is a wide consensus among policymakers and practitioners that while access to education has improved significantly for many children in low- and middle-income countries, learning has not kept pace. Information is a key building block of a wide range of strategies that attempts to tackle weaknesses in service delivery and accountability at the school level, even where political systems disappoint at the national level.