‘Being responsible for your decisions or actions and expected to explain them when you are asked’ (Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries).
Accountability may be vertical (top down) or horizontal (e.g. school-to-school or peer-to-peer support systems). It may include compliance with regulations, adherence to professional norms and/or be driven by outcomes. The purpose of accountability is widely accepted as one of strengthening the education system (Brill, Grayson, Kuhn and O’Donnell, 2018).
Accountability starts with governments, as primary duty bearers of the right to education … Governments should therefore take steps towards developing credible and efficient regulations with associated sanctions for all education providers, public and private, that ensure non-discrimination and the quality of education … No approach to accountability will be successful without a strong enabling environment that provides actors with adequate resources, capacity and information to fulfil their responsibilities (SDG-Education 2030 Steering Committee, 2018, p. 2).