Making costs count: Harmonized standards for generation and use of cost evidence in global education and ECCE
Every investment in children represents a choice.
对儿童的每一项投资都代表着一种选择。
It is a choice about who to prioritize, which programs to support, which reforms to pursue, and ultimately how limited resources can create the greatest possible developmental and educational opportunities.
这是一个关于优先考虑谁、支持哪些项目、进行哪些改革以及最终如何利用有限的资源创造最大可能的发展和教育机会的选择。
These choices have never been more important.
这些选择从未如此重要。
Around the world, education and early childhood development (ECD) systems are striving to improve developmental and learning outcomes while responding to rapid technological change, demographic pressures, political and climate-related disruptions, and widening inequalities.
在世界各地，教育和儿童早期发展 (ECD) 系统正在努力改善发展和学习成果，同时应对快速的技术变革、人口压力、政治和气候相关的干扰以及日益扩大的不平等。
Governments are expected to do more with constrained budgets, and donors increasingly seek evidence that investments deliver lasting value.
人们期望各国政府在预算有限的情况下做更多的事情，而捐助者也越来越多地寻求投资能够带来持久价值的证据。
Researchers continue to expand our understanding of what works, yet one fundamental question too often remains unanswered: What does it actually cost to achieve meaningful change in specific contexts for specific populations?
研究人员不断扩大我们对有效方法的理解，但一个基本问题往往仍未得到解答：在特定背景下为特定人群实现有意义的改变实际上需要花费多少钱？
Despite decades of global investments in education, we still, as a sector, lack a clear answer that decisionmakers can use.
尽管全球对教育进行了数十年的投资，但作为一个部门，我们仍然缺乏决策者可以使用的明确答案。
Answering that question is no longer optional.
回答这个问题不再是可选的。
Over the past two decades, the education and ECD sectors have made remarkable progress in measuring developmental and learning outcomes and evaluating program effectiveness.
在过去的二十年中，教育和幼儿发展部门在衡量发展和学习成果以及评估项目有效性方面取得了显着进展。
Far less progress has been made in understanding the resources required to produce those outcomes or in using cost evidence to guide policy and investment decisions.
在了解产生这些成果所需的资源或使用成本证据来指导政策和投资决策方面取得的进展要少得多。
As a result, many decisions about financing programs, scaling up interventions, and reforming entire education systems continue to rely on incomplete information.
因此，许多有关融资计划、扩大干预措施和改革整个教育系统的决策仍然依赖于不完整的信息。
Without understanding costs alongside educational outcomes, it is impossible to judge whether an intervention represents the best use of scarce resources or whether its success can realistically be sustained and expanded.
如果不了解成本和教育成果，就不可能判断一项干预措施是否代表了对稀缺资源的最佳利用，或者其成功是否能够真正持续和扩大。
This guidance note has been developed to help close that gap.
本指导说明旨在帮助缩小这一差距。
Produced through the Global Costing Taskforce for Education and Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) convened by the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, it presents a harmonized framework for generating, analyzing, reporting, disseminating, and using cost evidence across the global education sector.
该报告由布鲁金斯学会普及教育中心召集的全球教育和幼儿保育和教育成本工作组 (ECCE) 制作，提出了一个统一的框架，用于在全球教育部门生成、分析、报告、传播和使用成本证据。
Throughout this guidance, the term “education” is understood broadly to include early childhood development, care and education, primary and secondary education, technical and vocational education and training (TVET), higher education, youth development, nonformal learning, and education support services.
在本指南中，“教育”一词被广泛理解，包括幼儿发展、保育和教育、小学和中学教育、技术和职业教育与培训（TVET）、高等教育、青少年发展、非正规学习和教育支持服务。
Drawing on existing methodological literature together with an extensive international consultative process involving governments, donors, researchers, implementing organizations, and technical experts, the guidance seeks to strengthen the quality, comparability, transparency, and practical usefulness of cost evidence.
该指南借鉴现有的方法论文献以及涉及政府、捐助者、研究人员、实施组织和技术专家的广泛国际咨询过程，旨在加强成本证据的质量、可比性、透明度和实际用途。
Equally importantly, it establishes a shared vocabulary that enables stakeholders across institutions and countries to communicate using common concepts and methodological assumptions.
同样重要的是，它建立了一个共享词汇表，使各个机构和国家的利益相关者能够使用共同的概念和方法假设进行交流。
The central premise of this guidance is straightforward: cost data is an essential decisionmaking tool which stakeholders are currently not using effectively .
本指南的中心前提很简单：成本数据是利益相关者目前尚未有效使用的重要决策工具。
Governments should use it to prioritize investments and assess fiscal sustainability.
政府应利用它来确定投资的优先顺序并评估财政可持续性。
Donors should rely on it to compare funding opportunities and improve portfolio performance.
捐助者应该依靠它来比较融资机会并提高投资组合绩效。
Implementing organizations should use it to understand cost drivers, strengthen operational efficiency, and plan for long-term sustainability.
实施组织应利用它来了解成本驱动因素、提高运营效率并规划长期可持续性。
Researchers who generate cost evidence to complement impact evaluations and improve understanding of what constitutes effective and efficient educational investments can do more in making cost evidence relevant and accessible to decisionmakers.
研究人员生成成本证据来补充影响评估并提高对有效和高效教育投资构成要素的理解，可以在使成本证据与决策者相关且可供决策者获取方面做出更多努力。
Civil society organizations, communities and families should use cost evidence to promote transparency and accountability.
民间社会组织、社区和家庭应利用成本证据来提高透明度和问责制。
Although these stakeholders ask different questions, they can all benefit from using reliable cost information to make better decisions.
尽管这些利益相关者提出不同的问题，但他们都可以从使用可靠的成本信息做出更好的决策中受益。
The guidance therefore argues that the sector must invest not only in producing more high-quality cost evidence, but equally in strengthening the institutional capacity to interpret, communicate, and routinely use that evidence throughout policy, planning, implementation, financing, and evaluation.
因此，该指南认为，该部门不仅必须投资于提供更多高质量的成本证据，还必须同样投资于加强在整个政策、规划、实施、融资和评估过程中解释、沟通和常规使用这些证据的机构能力。
At the heart of the document is a practical cost measurement framework organized around the decisions that cost evidence is intended to inform.
该文件的核心是围绕成本证据旨在提供信息的决策组织的实用成本衡量框架。
Rather than beginning with spreadsheets, budgets, or accounting systems, the framework starts by defining the decision objective.
该框架不是从电子表格、预算或会计系统开始，而是从定义决策目标开始。
That objective determines the cost questions that need to be answered, which in turn guide the selection of analytical methods, determine the data that should be collected, and shape the resulting analysis.
该目标决定了需要回答的成本问题，进而指导分析方法的选择，确定应收集的数据，并形成最终的分析。
This logical sequence ensures that cost studies generate evidence that is directly relevant to real-world decisions rather than collecting information simply because it is available.
这种逻辑顺序确保成本研究生成与现实世界决策直接相关的证据，而不是仅仅因为信息可用而收集信息。
The framework is equally applicable to discrete education interventions and to broader system-level reforms—while recognizing that these require different levels of complexity and analytical precision.
该框架同样适用于离散的教育干预措施和更广泛的系统层面的改革，同时认识到这些改革需要不同程度的复杂性和分析精度。
It also reflects an increasingly important reality: The global body of cost evidence continues to grow.
它还反映了一个日益重要的现实：全球成本证据持续增长。
Organizations should therefore begin by reviewing existing evidence before launching new costing studies, while recognizing the responsibility to generate and publish new evidence wherever important knowledge gaps remain.
因此，组织应在启动新的成本研究之前首先审查现有证据，同时认识到在仍然存在重要知识差距的地方生成和发布新证据的责任。
Building a cumulative, openly accessible evidence base is essential if future decisions are to become progressively better informed.
如果未来的决策要逐渐变得更加明智，那么建立累积的、可公开获取的证据库至关重要。
Building on this framework, the guidance proposes harmonized standards covering every stage of the cost measurement process.
在此框架的基础上，该指南提出了涵盖成本计量过程每个阶段的统一标准。
It provides practical recommendations for selecting appropriate costing methodologies, planning cost data collection, organizing and categorizing cost information, developing transparent data collection protocols, and selecting analytical approaches that match the intended use of the evidence.
它为选择适当的成本计算方法、规划成本数据收集、组织和分类成本信息、制定透明的数据收集协议以及选择与证据的预期用途相匹配的分析方法提供了实用的建议。
The guidance also addresses key methodological issues, including cost adjustments, analytical perspectives, shared costs, in-kind contributions, missing data, and sensitivity analysis, and summarizes reporting and publication standards designed to improve transparency, reproducibility, and comparability across studies.
该指南还解决了关键的方法论问题，包括成本调整、分析视角、分担成本、实物捐助、缺失数据和敏感性分析，并总结了旨在提高研究之间的透明度、可重复性和可比性的报告和出版标准。
Finally, it outlines dissemination practices that help ensure cost evidence reaches the policymakers, practitioners, researchers, funders, and civil society who can use it to improve educational decisionmaking.
最后，它概述了传播实践，有助于确保决策者、从业者、研究人员、资助者和民间社会能够利用成本证据来改善教育决策。
This guidance is intended to be more than a technical manual—it represents a collective commitment by the global education community to strengthen the role of cost evidence in improving educational policy and practice.
本指南不仅仅是一本技术手册，它代表了全球教育界的集体承诺，即加强成本证据在改进教育政策和实践中的作用。
Harmonized standards alone will not transform decisionmaking.
仅靠统一标准并不能改变决策。
Their value depends on widespread adoption, continued refinement, transparent reporting, and a shared commitment to building a cumulative body of comparable evidence.
它们的价值取决于广泛采用、持续改进、透明的报告以及建立可比较证据的累积体的共同承诺。
The work of the Global Costing Taskforce therefore does not end with this publication; rather, this guidance provides a common foundation upon which future methodological advances, institutional capacity, and international collaboration can continue to build.
因此，全球成本核算工作组的工作并没有随着本出版物的发布而结束。相反，本指南提供了一个共同基础，未来的方法进步、机构能力和国际合作可以在此基础上继续发展。
By embedding high-quality cost evidence alongside evidence of effectiveness, the global education and early childhood communities can make more informed investments, use scarce resources more wisely, and ultimately improve learning opportunities for children, young people, and adult learners around the world.
通过嵌入高质量的成本证据和有效性证据，全球教育和幼儿社区可以做出更明智的投资，更明智地使用稀缺资源，并最终改善世界各地儿童、年轻人和成人学习者的学习机会。
The Brookings Institution is committed to quality, independence, and impact.
布鲁金斯学会致力于质量、独立性和影响力。
We are supported by a diverse array of funders .
我们得到了众多资助者的支持。
In line with our values and policies , each Brookings publication represents the sole views of its author(s).
根据我们的价值观和政策，布鲁金斯学会的每份出版物均代表其作者的唯一观点。