What Works? A Comparative Cost Analysis of Early Childhood Development and Education Programs in Humanitarian Settings

• In Event: Intersectoral Approaches to Education in Humanitarian Crises and Emergencies (I)

Proposal

This presentation will review findings from the International Rescue Committee’s comparative analysis of early childhood development and education programs in humanitarian settings to fill the knowledge and evidence gap on the most cost-efficient and cost-effective education programs in conflict and crisis settings. Assessing the cost of developing and implementing international education programs is integral to informing decision making around sustaining and scaling successful interventions in humanitarian and development contexts.

Cost analysis of education interventions improves program development while also benefiting beneficiaries, partner organizations, donors, policy makers and/or governments wishing to scale programs. Including cost analysis in program evaluation processes allows stakeholders to understand the major cost drivers of specific interventions. Additionally, access to highly reliable cost data on context-specific activity components supports project team decision making for future iterations of the intervention, while also allowing local governments or partners key insights when scaling interventions. Costing also identifies the least costly program delivery models with the greatest impact on key outcomes, supports the use of data to inform decisions on the allocation of financial resources, and demonstrates how costs vary across contexts to maximize the impact of each dollar spent to improve the lives of target populations and their communities.

The IRC’s standardized approach to cost analysis enables practitioners to make comparisons across programs to understand how various implementation models across different contexts affect program cost and impact. By compiling robust cost data and programmatic information from multiple countries to understand how context affects the costs of delivering services, we aim to fill an evidence gap in the humanitarian education sector on the most cost-efficient and cost-effective program implementation models.

This workshop is designed for education researchers, cost analysts, program developers and coordinators, and evaluators working within the international education sector. Participants will be engaged in a guided practice of conducting a comparative exercise using cost data and intervention specific variables from previously implemented IRC and partner programs. The audience will collaborate to develop questions of interest that can be answered by the growing breadth of program and cost information at their disposable. After sharing out these questions with us, we will engage in a collective discussion to answer their questions of interest and discuss the results of our comparative analysis findings.

During the first part of the workshop, we will provide an overview of (1) different cost analysis approaches and (2) the use case for program specific cost data. We will present on the International Rescue Committee’s approach to cost analysis’s approach to cost analysis and share our existing education cost dataset. This dataset contains program-specific cost data on education and early childhood interventions implemented across multiple conflict-affected settings. The programmatic information included in the dataset is disaggregated by variables including, but not limited to program title, country, program length, intervention category, age group targeted, outcomes of interest, and more.

During the second half of the workshop, we will ask audience members to break out into groups to generate cost questions of interest. We will provide the following two example questions to guide their discussion: 1) How does the cost of a program in one context compare to the cost of the same program in another context; and 2) Which types of interventions have the highest cost per child (based on context, modality, intervention design, etc.?) Following this exercise, we will engage in a collaborative discussion with the audience to answer the questions of interest. In answering these questions, we will highlight key takeaways generated from our comparative analysis and share relevant program design lessons on which interventions/program delivery models provide the most impact for beneficiaries at the lowest cost. By providing audience members with an opportunity to synthesize cost data, we aim to improve their knowledge of efficiency drivers for key interventions and increase their uptake of cost data in program design and education research. This workshop will also improve participants’ abilities to shape donor expectations around implementation costs and will allow stakeholders to allocate financial resources in a way that maximizes the impact to beneficiaries.

Authors

• Cecelia Scheuer, International Recue Committee

• Athena Haywood, International Rescue Committee