Scaling education innovations in complex emergencies: a meta-evaluation of five process and three impact evaluations

ABSTRACT

The papers in this special issue describe evaluations of the scaling journey of five different education programmes operating in humanitarian crises. This introduction first presents the research context for these evaluations followed by a synthesis of the overarching barriers and facilitators to scaling across three domains: (1) context, (2) business model, and (3) advocacy and ownership based on a qualitative synthesis. The synthesis showed that implementers often started multiple pilot projects in different contexts rather than scaling-up in one context. We also present a summary of impacts on learning outcomes from impact evaluations of three of the five education programmes.

KEYWORDS:

• Education
• Refugees’ Evidence Synthesis
• Mixed-methods
• Kenya
• Bangladesh
• Sudan
• Jordan

Acknowledgements

We recognise the contributions of many organisations, without which it would not have been possible to complete this report on the meta-evaluation for the Humanitarian Education Accelerator (HEA). Our thanks go to the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, the United Nations Children’s Fund, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for the opportunity to carry out this study, and for their financial and technical support. Kepler, War Child Holland, the World University Service of Canada, Libraries Without Borders, and Caritas Switzerland also made important technical contributions to this report. Finally, we acknowledge the members of the Reference Group for the HEA, whose inputs guided the direction of this report.

Many individuals also made important contributions and are listed below in alphabetical order:

Felipe Barrera-Osorio, Chris Berry, Matt Brossard, Felicity Brown, Serafina Buzby, Mohammed El Desouky, Thomas Dreesen, Ian Gray, Ashley Haywood, Henri van den Idsert, Darius Isaboke, Charlotte Jenner, Andrea Jetten, Mark Jordans, Kathleen Letshabo, Timothy Kinoti, Naomi Maina, Laura Miller, Alice Obrecht, Juan Pablo Giraldo Ospino, Muy-Cheng Peich, Oriana Ponta, Clara van Praag, Kate Radford, Dominic Richardson, Hanadi Riyadh, Beatrice Rutishauser-Ramm, Jasmine Turner, and Nina Weaver Our acknowledgements would be incomplete without mentioning our team of very able enumerators in Jordan, Kenya, and Rwanda. Specifically, we acknowledge the input of the team of community mobilisers from the World University Service of Canada, teachers from Libraries Without Borders and the Danish Refugee Council, and enumerators from Laterite and Proximity, whose dedication during data collection ensured the collection of high-quality data.The patience exercised by partner organisations, team contributors, students, and parents during interviews and focus groups is also greatly appreciated. It is our hope that insights garnered from the information they provided will help to enhance the strength of the interventions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. UNICEF selected AIR to conduct this research using a competitive procurement process following a request for proposals.

2. For a full in-depth discussion of the methodology and all results of the meta-evaluation, see de Hoop et al. (2019).

3. We discuss how we applied each method in more detail in the following articles in this issue.

4. Because the quantitative studies focus on different intervention types, we were limited in our choice of evidence synthesis methods. The diversity of intervention types necessitated the use of different outcome measures and limited our ability to conduct a meta-analysis to synthesise the results. For this reason, we compare the results with other impact evaluations of education programs in a narrative synthesis as opposed to conducting a formal meta-analysis.