By Dr Rosaria Marron
2020 was a challenging year for most, if not all, people globally. By mid-2020, the Covid-19 epidemic was a full-blown pandemic with changes and restrictions being put in place by different countries as they tried to navigate and manage the evolving situation. On a personal level, I was just resuming my career journey after a long enough break, my eldest daughter was just starting primary school while my youngest had just started going to creche (nursery school or kindergarten). Then in Ireland, we had gone into one of the strictest lockdowns due to the pandemic, and we were all suddenly stuck in the house and unable to go out more than 5km from our home. Between trying to navigate home-schooling and managing a toddler, it was a very busy household.
As Education and Development Solutions (EADS), we were only in our first year of work and the company was still in its infancy and ‘teething’ as it were. In the midst of all this, we got a contract to conduct a formative evaluation for a female teacher education programme for UNICEF Afghanistan. Brilliant opportunity, but terrible timing! I suddenly found myself leading my dream assignment in ‘not so ideal’ circumstances. Together with colleagues, we plodded on, nonetheless, and after a very shaky start the evaluation proceeded and was successfully completed last year. As a company, we are proud to have received exceptional feedback from UNICEF’s Evaluation Quality Assessments Division on this evaluation, with an overall rating of 98%. The assessment states that our evaluation report exceeds UNICEF/UNEG standards for evaluation reports and decision makers may use the evaluation with a very high degree of confidence!
I quote, “This is an exceptional evaluation of Afghanistan’s Girls’ Access through Female Teacher Education (GATE) Scholarship Program. It aims to determine how effective the intervention was in increasing female teacher presence in hard-to-reach areas and increasing girls’ participation in learning spaces and retention, as well as identify any gaps that could be addressed to improve programming and scale-up. This formative evaluation also served as an independent platform for stakeholders to provide feedback on how to improve programme implementation. Evaluators used a Culturally Responsive Evaluation Framework. The design and methods were rigorous and described in detail. Data collection included literature review, surveys, KIIs, and focus group discussions. Structured checklist-based observations of the same lesson being taught at six different schools and in-depth interviews with students to gather personal stories of transformation were also conducted. The purpose for using each method with each stakeholder group was carefully explained, as were processes for quality assurance. The findings section is detailed and uses quotes from different stakeholders to back up quantitative data. Conclusions and recommendations are solid; however, lessons learned could have been formulated differently to enable wider applicability. The evaluators assessed the extent to which the intervention contributed towards the reduction of inequalities and exclusion, particularly for disadvantaged groups, hard-to-reach locations, and students with disabilities. Human Rights and Gender Equity are well-integrated into the evaluation objectives, questions, and methodology, which also considers Afghanistan’s socio-cultural norms.”
On a professional level and as a new consultancy company, a lot of lessons were learnt during the process. And I have brought, and will continue to bring these on to subsequent evaluations. But for now, I remain proud and thankful of this achievement. We have gone on to open our Africa Branch in Zambia late last year, and will keep you all updated on our work in the region. As we begin a new year, I reflect on my post graduate alumni university’s motto: Respice Prospice—Looking back, to look forward!