Elizaveta Rusakova, consultant at Learn More who led the portfolio analysis to evaluate GPE’s COVID-19 Response, shares key findings from the assignment.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to shut down worldwide. The Global Partnership for Education (GPE) set aside over $500 million through three grants to support 66 countries in addressing educational challenges. At the end of 2022, a consortium composed of TripleLine, Learn More, and Technopolis evaluated the relevance, effectiveness, and sustainability of GPE’s COVID-19 support, and summarized lessons learned from this large-scale education emergency response. Learn More’s quantitative evaluator Elizaveta Rusakova conducted a GPE grant support portfolio analysis across 66 countries. Findings were published in a final evaluation report and discussed during several learning events, including the recent workshop run by GPE titled “COVID-19 responses: Supporting learning, equity, and resilience to future disruptions”.
GPE summative evaluation in response to the global pandemic
The evaluation provided useful insights into the grant application process, funded activities, and potential improvements for future grant design and implementation. Some of the key findings are discussed below:
GPE grant mechanisms provided flexibility to adapt to countries’ context and changing pandemic needs, but countries rarely used this flexibility to ensure funded activities remained relevant as the pandemic evolved. GPE grants managed to balance between adapting to pandemic conditions and country contexts and addressing the needs of vulnerable groups. This was achieved by prioritizing fast roll-out, aligning activities with national planning for emergency response, and offering various activities to address learning disruptions. To ensure grant inclusivity, GPE required grant agents to specify how the needs of vulnerable children, including girls, would be addressed during the program. This requirement combined with the variety of equity activities to choose from resulted in most grants targeting vulnerable groups. Moreover, GPE allowed grants to request revisions during the implementation. However, grants mostly requested timeline-related changes rather than adjustments of scope or activities despite rapidly changing pandemic’s circumstances. This suggests that either countries were hesitant to change the activities or there was no need to do so.
Grants with fewer and simpler activities were more successful. Equipping schools with minimum hygiene standards and protection and well-being activities (i.e. sensitization campaigns, and psychological programs to minimize the negative impacts of school closures) was the most successful type of activity. In addition, grants with three or fewer but more specific objectives implemented activities on time and used the funds better than grants with four or more objectives. This approach is consistent with the systems thinking approach which states that the first step in solving complex problems (as was the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Cynefin framework and the system thinking approach) is to take a series of simple actions to simplify, create order and conditions to deal with the rest of the In this case, providing students and schools with health and safety infrastructure was a crucial first step in organizing the response and preparing the ground for more complex activities (distance learning, teacher training).
Distance learning programs, which were integral to GPE’s support to the COVID-19 response, reached 77 million children. While they allowed many countries to test new, innovative learning solutions, they were not always consistent with existing technological capabilities. Distance learning initiatives ranged from using printed materials, radio, and TV to digital learning via online platforms. However, not every approach fits well with the technology available in low and lower-middle-income countries. Despite technological constraints,[1] countries in Sub-Saharan Africa invested in distance learning activities that used TV, radio and the Internet.[2] For instance, the Democratic Republic of Congo provided distance learning content via radio, but many students from vulnerable backgrounds reported to have been excluded due to the unavailability of radio devices. This situation reflects global trends in remote learning summarized in “An Ed-Tech Tragedy” report (UNESCO). Conversely, some grants used distance learning budgets to pilot innovative solutions despite limited connectivity. In Somaliland, the Ministry of Education distributed solar-powered radios and tablets with MP3-recorded lessons to the students in remote areas lacking TV and radio coverage.
GPE’s COVID-19 support balanced timely approval, fast roll-out, robust quality assurance, and inclusivity effectively. However, evaluating the effectiveness of such an unprecedentedly large-scale emergency response was challenging due to the lack of data on which strategies were likely to be most effective. Simply put, there were no previous experiences to compare results with. Moreover, data collection and reporting often took a backseat to grant implementation during emergencies.
At Learn More, we analyse complex systems through a system-transformation approach. Donella Meadows’s Leverage Points model[3] reminds us that controlling information flows is one of the most impactful ways to transform a system. The outputs generated by our evaluation of GPE’s global grants have accelerated information workflows about effective strategies in education emergency response. Evaluation findings are crucial to enhance sector preparedness for future educational emergencies, especially given the increasing frequency of global crises and the current lack of structured data.
Find out more in our “Portfolio” section by reading the article “Summative Evaluation of GPE’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic” or by going directly to GPE’s website and reading “Learning from the Largest COVID-19 Response in Education: a Summary of Evaluation Findings”.
[1] The World Bank estimated that only 30% of the poorest African households have a radio, and only 4% have a television. Source: UNESCO. 2023. An ed-tech tragedy? Educational technologies and school closures in the time of COVID-19.
[2] Among GPE partner countries, on average, Sub-Saharan countries invested around 50% of the distance learning budget into programs with the use of radio/TV, and 20% – into programs with the use of the Internet.
[3] https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/