Journey to scale: Value for money of education in emergency programmes

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Tuesday VI)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Journey to scale: a digital game based learning approach for children in humanitarian settings

Proposal

Value for Money (VfM) evaluations of complex programmes, such as Can’t Wait to Learn, are not systematically and regularly conducted within the development sector, and are especially lacking for programmes implemented in humanitarian settings. However, consideration and systematic evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of innovative programmes at the planning, implementation and evaluation phases, is crucial to understand the potential of a programme to reach scale. Such data is vital to inform implementers and policy makers and enable programme uptake and roll-out.

War Child Holland measures cost-effectiveness of the Can’t Wait to Learn programme as currently implemented, as well as its potential to offer cost-effectiveness at scale. Based upon UKAID’s VfM framework, we will present the updated VfM results following the recent studies in Jordan, Lebanon and Sudan, in addition to discussing VfM indications for the programme in Uganda. VfM for Can’t Wait to Learn is assessed at different levels: 1) economy, i.e. the cost per child enrolled, 2) efficiency, i.e. the cost per child who completes the programme, 3) effectiveness, i.e. the cost per competent completer (children who achieve a ‘graduate’ level of competence), and 4) equity, i.e. the additional money required to reach more vulnerable children and youth, e.g. children with disabilities, or those where girls’ education is not the norm.

In this paper, Amir Jones will discuss challenges and opportunities for developing education in emergencies programmes designed to produce economy, efficiency and effectiveness at scale, while reaching some of the most vulnerable children and youth, both with respect to Can’t Wait to Learn and within the education in emergencies sector as a whole. Furthermore, he will discuss challenges and key lessons learned from extensive experience in conducting VfM evaluations of complex innovations.

Author

• Amir Jones, Independent consultant