Education Scalability Checklist – identifying key areas for improved scalability of education initiatives: recommendations for VVOB’s IT’S PLAY Programme

• In Event: 1, 2, 3 freeze! How we are learning and adapting ECE projects in East Africa before increasing scale

Proposal

In an effort to support governments, funders, and education organisations to scale up effective education initiatives, VVOB – education for development joined forces with Brookings (CUE), Educate!, MSI, Pratham, and STiR Education to create the ‘Education Scalability Checklist’ (ESC).The ESC is a dynamic diagnostic tool to help identify areas where an education initiative might require further consideration and adaptations in order to increase the likelihood of scaling. ESC is used to guide the initial design of new education initiatives and then to persistently drive forward the scaling process. Based on the ESC, scalability action plans are developed and updated yearly, helping the initiative identify the priority action areas to increase the scalability of the model.

As part of the Play our Part initiative (POP), VVOB implements the IT’S PLAY program, building play facilitation skills of Early Childhood Education (ECE) teachers and strengthening the integration of Learning through Play (LtP) into ECE systems in 3 countries: Zambia, Rwanda and Uganda. Starting during the inception phase and used systematically throughout the programme’s implementation cycles; the ESC identifies key areas to increase the scalability of the IT’S PLAY model and supports VVOB and partners in laying out learning questions along the path-to-scale. As scalability is highly impacted by contextual factors, the IT’S PLAY programme, applies the ESC separately for the 3 country contexts.

Initial conclusions from the ESC exercise in the three countries led to the formulation of 3 key recommendations for increasing the scalability of the programme intervention.

The first recommendation is the need to build the credibility of the initiative through robust evidence, external evaluations and visualising the impact of the programme on learners for decision-makers. This has led to the integration of robust impact measurements into the initiatives MEL approach, focusing on outcomes at the level of children, classrooms and teachers.

A second conclusion is that the model adopted by IT’S PLAY in Zambia is relatively complex which does not improve the scalability of the initiative as it complicates the transfer and adoption of the model into the education system. As a result, the MEL approach in Zambia focuses strongly on finding ways to reduce the complexity of the model and prototyping some elements, making sure that ease of transfer and adoption are taken into account early on.

A third conclusion is that (especially) in Rwanda and in Uganda, the model’s fit with the education system seems to be lower than in Zambia. This is mostly because the ECE system/provision has not been developed to the same extent as in Zambia. This highlights the need to not only advocate and strengthen decision-makers on the integration of LtP in ECE in Rwanda and Uganda, but also focus more on the development of the ECE sector and system in general. This has led to an increased focus in the early stages of the programme on the development of the long-term vision and institutionalisation plans for teacher professional development in these ECE systems.

Authors

• Joke Van Belle, VVOB - education for development

• Marone John Zulu, VVOB education for Development