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The Royal Netherlands Embassy is providing substantial funding to the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education , the North West Department of Education and the Media in Education Trust (MiET) for an Education Centres Supporting Rural Development programme, as well as a Schools as Centres of Care and Support for Children HIV and AIDS programme over a period of four years, from 1 April 2005 to 31 March 2009. SAIDE has been commissioned to conduct an evaluation. Both programmes will have both a school and a community development element.
Kate Kuhn and Tessa Welch report:
The project is a large-scale roll-out of a pilot programme conducted over the past five years, The Multimedia Rural Initiative, through which 15 rural education centres were established in KwaZulu-Natal and 11 in the North West. These centres used ICTs, print resources and face-to-face support to provide access to education resources, services and programmes to rural schools and communities. As the concept document states, the model was underpinned by the belief “that rural schools cannot distance themselves from the socio-economic contexts that affect the communities that surround them and from where learners come”.
Education Centres Supporting Rural Development Programme
The purpose of the programme is to establish a network of district and satellite education centres that serve as decentralised nodes for the delivery of quality basic education and other socio-economic programmes, services and resources to schools and their communities. The centres will be established in all regions and districts in the two provinces, with higher concentrations of centres in previously disadvantaged rural areas.
A major aim will be to bridge the rural-urban divide and to lessen isolation, lack of resources, legacy of poverty, deprivation and neglect that rural schools and their communities face.
In KwaZulu-Natal, the target is to identify, establish or build, staff, equip and offer programmes and services in 120 centres between 2005 and 2009. In the North West Province, the target for the same period is 63 centres. The responsibility for the Education Centres project is primarily with the two Departments of Education, but the Media in Education Trust is funded to provide support in advocacy, management and capacity building.
Schools as Centres of Care and Support (SCCS) Programme
This programme arose from needs analyses conducted in schools and communities in the pilot phase of the project – in which combating HIV and AIDS was identified as a priority need that had to be addressed through the education centres.
The purpose of the programme is to enable clusters of eight schools around education centres in the most rural parts of KwaZulu-Natal and North West provinces to implement effective HIV and AIDS strategies, to integrate HIV and AIDS education into the curriculum, to lead community strategies that respond to HIV and AIDS and to improve care for orphans and vulnerable children. The responsibility for this programme is shared between the Media in Education Trust and the provincial Departments of Education, with MiET managing the community strategies and the Departments taking responsibility for whole school strategies and integration of HIV and AIDS into the curriculum.
Evaluation
SAIDE has been appointed as the evaluator of both of these programmes in the two provinces, with responsibility also, through Neil Butcher and Associates and Blue Matrix, for seeing that a project management database is set up to enable the project partners to monitor progress in this complex project.
The evaluation will seek to answer the following overarching questions:
- The project plan is predicated on a complex set of relationships among the Provincial Departments of Education (PDoEs), other provincial departments, the MiET and the Royal Netherlands Embassy. Against this agreed plan, have the different parties been able to fulfil their obligations and what has promoted or impeded this fulfilment?
- The project models cooperation between provincial departments and civil society and private sector organizations. What is the potential for such models of cooperation?
- The project plan presupposes that education centres can play a pivotal role in school and community development. To what extent has this assumption proved to be correct and what are the critical success factors in this regard?
- The project is implicitly testing a model for development and changed functioning of schools, particularly in the context of HIV and AIDS. To what extent has the Project influenced the development of policy in the provinces involved? What processes and conditions have made it possible for this to happen?
In order to address these questions consistently and cumulatively over the four years of the project, SAIDE has developed a set of indicators based on the performance indicators generated through the project management but organized according to six elements that were regarded as key in managing a large-scale collaborative project in a complex context.
- Know (in a large programme such as this, it is difficult to achieve shared understanding – communication is key)
- Do (it is one thing to know what the plan is and another to actually carry out the plan)
- Monitor progress (in a programme as large and complex as this, a functioning Management of Information system is vital – individual ad hoc reports are not adequate to keep track of progress)
- Do with others (in large scale programme such as this, one party can't simply go ahead and act – there is a need to work with others constructively)
- Have an impact/effect (motivation for continuation will rest on whether there are positive results for the beneficiaries as well as for the system as a whole)
- Reflect and change (complex, long term programmes need to be continually adjusting to new circumstances, and staff need to have the flexibility within the broad set of goals to make the necessary adjustments in a reflective way).
Largely positive findings on these six elements over a reasonable period of time make it likely that the project will be sustainable when the funding from the Royal Netherlands Embassy and the support of the Media in Education Trust reaches an end.
Thus far SAIDE has conducted a year one evaluation of both programmes in both provinces. The evaluation has consisted of an extensive document review, interviews and informal interactions with project management staff, and site visits to a sample of 10% of the total number of centres and two of their schools (SCCS and non-SCCS). This constitutes a baseline, against which progress at the end of the four years will be measured.
In terms of the diagrammatic representation of the evaluation, we have completed components one and two of the evaluation. In component three, we will do a trends analysis on management reports from the database; in component four, we conduct in-depth site visits to look at quality issues in the implementation of the objectives of the programme to begin to determine impact; in component five (due November 2007), we produce a mid-term evaluation report; and, at the end of project, after further analyses of information from the database, as well as a final set of site visits, we produce a final report evaluating impact in terms of the indicators and the key evaluation questions.
For information on the emerging findings, conclusions and recommendations of the evaluation, please contact Kate Kuhn at katek@saide.org.za |
