Knowledge, Evidence and Research for the Girls' Education South Sudan

The Girls' Education in South Sudan (GESS) Programme, a £60 million, six-year DFID-funded programme that aims to transform opportunities for a generation of girls in South Sudan through education. The programme provides incentives to households to offset the cost of keeping girls in schools and cash grants to schools to improve the learning environment, impacting on learning outcomes for both girls and boys. Mobilisation of parents and communities to retain girls in school until end of their secondary education is also a key component, through delivery of behaviour change communication in collaboration with government, non-state and private sector actors. The programme works with local governments and education managers to improve the quality of teaching and learning in schools. In addition, the programme aims to improve knowledge and information systems, including an attendance monitoring system through SMS reporting.

EfC was contracted by Charlie Goldsmith Associates (under their contract with Mott MacDonald) to develop the Knowledge, Evidence and Research (KER) component of the Girls' Education in South Sudan (GESS) Programme. This involved looking at the effect of the programme in achieving its outcome goal on enrolment, retention and learning achievements, as well as looking at wider issues of the education sector including teaching and learning practices in the classroom, decision-making processes in the household and government capacity to manage and support schools. The KER approach sought to develop knowledge which is relevant and useful to government priorities as well as informing what works about the programme. The EfC team worked with Ministry officials to develop a comprehensive strategy and plan for research for the whole five years, including data collection at baseline, midline and endline, as well as ad-hoc studies on specific areas of interest. A core part of this approach was to develop local research capacity, within the government and beyond. EfC supported a team of local experts to finalise the research design and develop tools for baseline data collection, including at schools, households and local governments. EfC managed the training, data collection and analysis of the baseline pilot tools for schools in all 10 states, and adapted the instruments accordingly, including translating them for handheld survey technology. EfC also conducted the trained researchers for the school survey baseline.