Evaluation of the USAID/Zambia's Education Program

DevTech completed an independent assessment of the impact of USAID/Zambia’s education program between 2003 and 2009, and presented recommendations for USAID's new educational strategy, programming options and investments for 2010–2015.

The evaluation team conducted both

1. a summative evaluation of the three largest USAID-funded education programs, an end-of-project assessment, as two programs are scheduled to end in late September, 2009 and a third in September, 2010, and
2. a sectoral evaluation that assesses the synergies among projects for affecting overall program sub-sectors such as teacher training and information management systems.

The three-person team spent six weeks in Zambia utilizing six complementary, inter-related forms of gathering information:

1. review of pertinent documents throughout the evaluation process;
2. individual and group interviews;
3. a select few focus group discussions;
4. visits to schools, classroom observations and conversations with local citizens;
5. meetings with MOE personnel at the zonal, district, provincial and central levels, grantees' offices, non-governmental Organizations (NGOs), among others; and
6. the administration of anonymous questionnaires to individuals and groups of people involved in and knowledgeable of one or more of the program activities.

The team spent eight days visiting 29 schools of all types, six District Education Board Secretary (DEBS) and three Provincial Education Officer (PEO) offices, district, zonal and provincial resource centers, three community radio stations and two teacher training colleges in Lusaka, Eastern and Southern provinces.

Publications

• USAID/Zambia Education Program Evaluation