Driving Value for Money for marginalised girls in Uganda

• In Event: Delivering Value for Money in girls’ education programming. Approaches and experiences from the Girls’ Education Challenge

Proposal

This presentation provides a Value for Money assessment for one of the projects funded through the Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC). The project – called GEARR-ing Up for Success After School project – was implemented from 2017 to 2021 by PEAS in Uganda. The project aimed to make affordable quality education more accessible to 7,400 marginalised girls. PEAS is a not-for-profit organisation that builds and runs secondary schools in remote areas of Uganda and Zambia, and works with government in both countries to improve secondary education more broadly. The project aimed to: (i) improve marginalised girls’ learning outcomes; (ii) support marginalised girls to make successful transitions through lower secondary into a post-school pathway of their choosing; and (iii) develop a sustainable model for delivering the project activities. In response to school closures due to Covid-19 in the final year of the programme, PEAS rapidly shifted its approach, delivering education in an innovative and equitable way in marginalised communities.

The GEARR model of low-cost private schools in marginalised areas offered very strong Value for Money (VfM) in providing access and learning outcomes. It was cost-effective and likely to be 100% financially sustainable by 2026. Its work to strengthen government systems through the collaborative Inspect & Improve programme also showed cost-effectiveness and promising sustainability by the end of the project in 2021. The project could reach marginalised girls through their low-cost private school operating model and fee structure, allowing it to keep day school fees low by charging higher but still affordable rates for boarding school fees. Their schools' annual cost per beneficiary is £202, which is 27% lower than the government equivalent and they target highly marginalised girls, thus reducing barriers to education.

The project interventions, including the role of the senior women teacher, literacy classes and COVID-19 interventions (learning packs, radio lessons and the telephone tree system) were highly relevant and kept girls in school and learning throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Life skills training (including a livelihood programme) also showed good relevance and effectiveness – girls' knowledge of transition opportunities remained high and their skills knowledge remained consistently high throughout the lifetime of the project.

The GEARR project was extremely effective at improving the literacy and numeracy score of students; Covid-19 remote response activities, such as learning packs and radio lessons, the role of senior women teachers and literacy classes all contributed to this positive learning outcome. In addition to PEAS' effectiveness in running schools, the PEAS-MoES Inspect and Improve programme was a highly effective value-add activity, which offers promising long-term contributions to the education sector in Uganda. This presentation will describe how the project managed to deliver such strong Value for Money and share any new insights on to what extent the project interventions have been sustained since the project has closed in 2021.

Authors

• Annelies Baneke, PEAS

• Valsa Shah, VSC-Economics Ltd.