Evaluation of Strømme Foundation’s Speed School Programme in West Africa At Stromme Foundation

Strømme Foundation (SF) is a rights-based international Non-Governmental Organisation (INGO), established in 1976 in Kristiansand, Norway. SF works towards a vision of a world free from poverty. Our values are human dignity, justice, and solidarity. With regional offices in Bamako, Mali for West Africa region, Kampala, Uganda for East Africa region, and Colombo, Sri Lanka for Asia region, SF has programmes in eleven countries.

SF’s current Strategic Plan (2019-2023) is closely aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and has three thematic goals: strengthening civil society, ensuring inclusive quality education for marginalised groups, and improving livelihoods of the rural poor through enhanced income generation. In 2021, SF reached a total of 540,125 individuals, of which 68% were women.

SF does not implement directly but works through local NGO partners. This approach provides a framework for collaboration with local organisations to strengthen their capacity, promote local ownership and ensure sustainability. All partners have a good understanding of the challenges facing the communities where they work, as well as an understanding of local power structures, cultures, and traditions. This contextual knowledge maximises the likelihood of achieving the development objectives of programmes in our countries of intervention.

In West Africa, SF is implementing programmes in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. In line with the three thematic goals, SF efforts in West Africa are concentrated on reaching primary school aged children who are out of school, adolescent girls and boys, youth, and women in poor rural communities to improve their access to education, livelihood and income generating activities and empowerment.

The Speed School programme, designed by West African education experts in partnership with Strømme Foundation in 2004 is the largest programme within SF’s education portfolio. Speed School is a nine-month intervention that provides access to education for out-of-school children (OOSC) aged 8-12 and enables them to enrol in a local school to complete their primary education. It consists of a condensed curriculum covering the first three years of primary education, and teaching is provided in a temporary school to groups with an average size of 25 learners. Upon completing the programme, children are tested, and based on the results normally graduate to grade 4 in the formal school. However, a small percentage of the learners graduate to grade 2 and 3. The programme is implemented by local partner organisations in close collaboration with SF and education authorities at municipality, regional and national level. In the West Africa region, SF currently works with 11 partner organisations, distributed across nine regions, 17 provinces, and 80 communes in the three countries of implementation. Since its inception, over 300,000 children have completed the Speed School programme in the three countries.

Evaluation Rationale

This evaluation is commissioned as part of Stromme Foundation’s 2019-2023 framework agreement with Norad. The primary purpose of the evaluation is to assess the achievements of the Speed School programme and draw lessons that can improve retention and learning outcomes of Speed School graduates in formal schools. Over the years, the programme has built partnerships with education key sectors/stakeholders at the national level and at the sub-national levels in the three countries. Recommendations from the evaluation should provide insights on how to empower communities and different actors and stakeholders to support the children’s education and strengthen formal schools.

The evaluation will further explore how multiple adverse events, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change, the deteriorating security situation and increasing political instability in the Sahel affect the implementation of the Speed School programme in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. Accordingly, the recommendations from the evaluation will facilitate the overall development and adaptation of the programme to said challenges.

Specific objectives

• Identify factors that affect promotion, retention, repetition, and dropout of Speed School graduates that have been transferred to formal school.
• Identify and assess the role of key stakeholders, including parents/guardians, traditional community leaders, elders, School Management Committees and school leaders and teachers in supporting the retention and learning outcomes of Speed School graduates in formal schools.
• Document gaps, lessons learnt and make recommendations on potential adaptions to improve retention, learning outcomes and completion rates.
• Suggest programme adaptations necessary to respond to and mitigate the effects of the multiple crises in the Sahel region.

Scope of the evaluation

Several studies have been conducted to assess the Speed School programme since its launch in 2004. This evaluation builds on recent studies, including Fafo (2018) and Association Subaahi Gumo (2021), as well as the 2022 Mid-term Review of SF’s West Africa programmes.

The Fafo study found that dropout rates of children once transferred to formal school were relatively high, up to 50%, but there was substantial variation between the three countries (FAFO 2018). For children with disabilities, SF’s own recent monitoring results (cohort 2020-2021,) indicate up to 50% dropout after just one year in formal school. The lack of follow-up of Speed School graduates once transferred to formal school was highlighted as a potential programme weakness in the 2022 Mid Term Review.

Key barriers to education for out-of-school children in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger include both demand-side and supply-side factors. On the demand-side, key barriers are poverty and child labour, food insecurity, armed conflict and displacement, psycho-social and mental health challenges, socio-cultural and gender-related factors such as child marriage and parental attitudes to formal education. On the supply-side, key factors are school infrastructure and classroom shortages and poor quality of education and learning outcomes.

The evaluation will enable an in-depth study into to which extent these factors affect retention, promotion, repetition, and dropout within the formal school system and to provide recommendations for further enhancing the collaboration and synergies between the Speed School programme, parents/guardians, communities, and the formal school sector to address these barriers.

The study should include a representative sample of communities from Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger and should be carried out in communities where the Speed School centres closed in June 2019 and June 2020. Speed School graduates will be key respondents of the study, along with parents/guardians, teachers, school management committees, education sector officials as well as other stakeholders and key informants. A qualitative study should be carried out with a sample of dropouts and their parents/guardians to collect in-depth information and analysis on the reasons for drop out. Consequently, the evaluation should focus on:

1. Identify the factors that affect the retention, promotion, repetition, or dropout of Speed School graduates in formal schools.

Examples of questions that this section should address are:

• How did Speed School graduates find the transition to primary school?
• Which factors helped support retention and completion of Speed School graduates in host schools?
• What are the main reasons for dropping out of formal school?

1. Identify and assess the role of key stakeholders, including parents/guardians, School Management Committees and school leaders and teachers in supporting the transfer and retention of Speed School graduates in formal schools.

Examples of questions that this section should address are:

• How do partner staff and Speed School animators work with parents/guardians to prepare the transfer of Speed School graduates to formal school?
• How do host schools work with parents/guardians of Speed School graduates once they have transferred to formal school?

A detailed list of questions will be discussed during the elaboration of the inception report.

Methodology and approach

The evaluation should utilise a mixed methods approach, combining quantitative and qualitative methods. Data should be collected from SF, host schools, Speed School graduates, parents/guardians, School Management Committees, partner NGO staff, community members, teachers, government officials and other identified key stakeholders. The study should include a tracer approach to track Speed School graduates from the cohorts 2018-19 and 2019-2020, including children who transferred to all relevant grades. Further, the study should include interviews with non-speed school learners to assess the differences in retention, promotion, repetition and dropout between SS graduates and non-SS graduates. The data should be disaggregated and analysed by gender, children with disabilities and internally displaced children. The methodology will be defined further in the inception report.

The evaluation shall build upon previous evaluations and their findings:

• IPA: Evaluation d’impact du programme Stratégie de Scolarisation Accélérée / Passerelle, Strømme Foundation, 2015
• IPA: Etude complémentaire de l’évaluation d’impact de la Stratégie de Scolarisation Accélérée / Passerelle, Strømme Foundation, 2017
• Fafo: Evaluation of Strømme Foundation’s Speed School Programme in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, 2018
• Strømme Foundation: New Normal Mapping, 2021-2022
• Strømme Foundation: Mid-term Review of West Africa programmes, 2022

Requirements for the consultant/consultancy team

• Extensive experience of working in the Sahel region in general, and in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger specifically, with strong knowledge of the local context.
• Significant experience in producing high-quality, credible evaluation reports in English for clients and organisations in the development sector, including research and evaluation of education programmes
• A proven record of conducting evaluation on education programme in Sahel region.
• Fluency in French and English
• Relevant quantitative and qualitative evaluation skills, demonstrable experience with participatory child-friendly methodologies
• Ability to travel in Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali, and to conduct in-field data collection
• Sound knowledge of a rights-based approach

Gender is a key dimension of SF work. Applicants are encouraged to include both male and female evaluators at both local and international levels. The team is expected to carry out field work in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. Strømme Foundation will work closely with our local partners to help facilitate the fieldwork, including logistical support. SF expects the consultant to provide an inception report with a clear evaluation design outlining methodology and timeline along with the budget. The plan should include details on the tools used for conducting interviews and surveys; and for the processing and analysis of data collected. All terms and conditions will be included in the consultancy contract agreement.

Deliverables

The evaluation report should be no more than 30 pages long with an executive summary of maximum four pages that focus on key findings and recommendations.

• Inception report, including a detailed work plan for the assignment
• Workshop/online call to validate methodology and tools
• Draft report
• Validation workshop/online call to discuss draft report, key findings, and recommendations
• Final report in English, including an executive summary
• Donor-friendly evaluation brief of max four pages
• Clean version of all the data used in the analysis, including data on respondent level

Timeline

The main part of the work is expected to take place in the first and second quarter of 2023. The final report should be submitted to Strømme Foundation by June 30th, 2023.