Mid-term evaluation of improving the quality of basic education in Amhara region

Background   
The project is initiated to solve actual education related problems in the Amhara region. The major areas of intervention identified were the following:
- Piloting model classrooms at grade one
- Upgrading ABE facilitators to the new cluster diploma level
- Supporting community based ECD centers
- Converting ABE centers to formal first cycle primary schools

Purpose/objective (including evaluation questions)   
 The primary purpose of this assessment is to measure the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability and impact of “Improving the Quality  of Basic Education in the Amhara Region” program. Specific objectives of the evaluation are to
• Examine the cost effectiveness and quality of the out puts of the project
• Assess the outcome of the project on teachers, supervisors & directors
• Reducing absenteeism, drop out, repetition rates and learning outcomes of both boys and girls
• Assess the capacity development accomplishments made on children’s participation in school activities and decision making
• Assess to what extent the school environment is safe for children
• Administer sample tests to check to what extent students improved their reading skills, understand comprehension/those major areas of language skills

Methodology    
 This evaluation process has applied participatory data collection methods. The number of zones, Woredas and schools as well as their composition in terms of culture, language and geographical set was diverse that represents the region. Furthermore, respondents were so diverse that students, PTAs, school teachers, delegates of school principals, college deans and officials at different level were sources of primary data. On top of this, primary data collection instruments were many such as interviews, student achievement tests, FGD, school observation and questionnaire. Student achievement and reading fluency tests were pre-tested in one rural school in East Gojjam zone and the test results were analyzed.

Key findings    
 Improving the quality of basic education in Amhara region project has greatly supported the region education bureau to improve the school environment, teachers’ qualification, continuous learning assessment, construction of schools, introducing model classes and school based action researches. As a result, there are changes observed in the overall school environment that visited schools are safer, children are performing better, dropout rate has shown consistent declining trend over the last couple of years in these sampled schools and promotion rate has shown almost consistent improvement over the years

Recommendations   
- Planned & strict monitoring & establishing learning forum and
- Providing mentorship technical support teachers should be initiated and schools should support teachers to focus their action research more on solving teaching learning process at classroom level
- Support teacher education colleges to learn from nearby primary schools and improve/strengthen their teaching processing focusing on classroom teaching skills is necessary

Follow up (with reference to Action Plan) 
- Shared the findings of the assesment to stakeholders
- Prepared the 2013 annual plan on the basis of the findings
- Geared 2013 project implementation according to the findings