USAID/Guinea: USAID/Guinea Publishes Education Program Evaluation

JULY 13, 2006

USAID/Guinea Publishes Education Program Evaluation

An evaluation finds USAID/Guinea's Basic Education program improves key benchmarks while reinforcing the values of transparency, participatory democracy and good governance.

CONAKRY -- An external evaluation of USAID/Guinea's Basic Education program portfolio has found that "USAID[-funded] projects have contributed to the development of planning capacity at various levels" of Guinea's educational system.

The USAID-financed evaluation, performed by DevTech Systems Inc., assessed the impact of USAID-funded activities on the Guinean education system and identified the impact, intended and unintended results, lessons learned, and best practices of the activities in Guinea since their inception.

Published in May, the evaluation found advances in major areas of the education sector as a result of USAID investments, despite a changing and challenging contextual backdrop.

Spanning the period between 1997 to the present, USAID's $57 million Basic Education program under the current mission strategy has supported Guinea's efforts to reach its Education for All (EFA) goals of improving the reach, quality and management of education in the country. Under a broader goal to improve the well-being of Guinean citizens and to enhance their ability to participate fully in the transition to democracy and economic prosperity, USAID's education strategic objective has been to "provide quality basic education to a larger percentage of Guinean children, with emphasis on girls and rural children."

USAID/Guinea's Basic Education program portfolio activities were designed to respond to the EFA program's focus on decentralization, strengthen education services at all administrative levels, address the poor quality of instruction and reinforce the participation of civil society in basic education. Activities have been carried out in close collaboration with government, civil society and implementing partners, including Education Development Center (EDC), World Education, RTI (Research Triangle Institute), Save the Children (SC/US) and Academy for Education and Development (AED).

USAID education program capacity-building efforts have been targeted at the institutional, systemic level, and the grassroots, community level. Evaluation findings concluded that these efforts have led to strengthened participatory approach by Guinea's Ministry of Education to develop consensus for change and enhanced the strategic planning capacities, including information management. The evaluation team found the Education Management Information System (EMIS), which is completely computerized, to be "one of the best in the [West Africa] sub-region."

Work with local parent associations and civil society has reinforced concepts of transparency in the decision-making process and in the management of resources for the sake of basic education for Guinean children, according to the evaluation, which added that local actors "to a very large extent, now view the school as belonging to their communities and make substantial financial and in-kind contributions in education."

Among the unintended results uncovered by the evaluation are the reinforcement of values of participatory democracy and good governance. For example, "at the local levels, work with parent associations and other elements of civil society has reinforced concepts of transparency in the decision-making process and in the management of resources."

The report also praises USAID's contributions to teacher training and learning material distribution in Guinea, saying, "materials were of good quality and pedagogical approaches were appropriate for teachers with requisite skills."

USAID's Africa Education Initiative was also noted for the support it provided to teachers and learning materials for children and for its Ambassador's Girls' Scholarships Program (AGSP), which buttressed existing efforts to improve gender equity in schools. The positive impacts on gender equity can be seen not only in increased girls' completion and retention rates, but also in increased numbers of women serving in leadership roles in PTAs and serving as role models.

The report cites factors that challenge project implementation and could hinder the advances made to date, including: the rapid growth of the school-going population, the lack of operational resources and the lag in decentralization efforts at the macro level.

Among the conclusions and recommendations, the report emphasizes that current results can be furthered with continued and expanded efforts sufficient in scope and scale, especially given the rapid expansion in educational demand. These efforts must, however, be coupled with the provision of increased resources, particularly at the local and regional levels.

The growing partnership between schools and communities will need to be further nurtured because "continuing support by communities will be based, at least in part, on their perception of tangible returns to education."

Full versions of the evaluation report are available in English (http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDACH431.pdf) and French (http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDACH432.pdf).

Story by USAID/Guinea Education Team