This RISE Working Paper, authored by Susan Watkins (University of California at Los Angeles, and RISE ILT member) with Amy Kaler (University of Alberta), addresses two issues that are critical to achieving systemic change in the education sector of countries where access to education has increased dramatically but without a concomitant improvement in learning: Firstly, the need for clear cultural understandings of the meaning of education – this is vital for changing an education system, otherwise there will be a misfit between the architecture of plans for systemic change, on the one hand, and the understandings of the value of education as perceived by from individual actors (civil servants in the Ministry of Education, teachers, parents, and students) on the other. Secondly, the need for policy makers and the implementers of reform to take into account certain aspects of the political economy to ensure there is a pivot in focus from access to learning.