1. Feed and Read: Improving Access to School Meals and Quality Education Around the World

USAID Office of Education and USDA McGovern-Dole International Food for Education lead a discussion on improved interagency collaboration and school feeding programs that seek to further the achievements in access to quality education and improved literacy, food security, and nutrition – especially for girls. The panel raised the perspectives of researchers, policymakers, and subject-matter experts on school feeding and literacy.

Key Takeaways

1. USAID Office of Education and USDA McGovern-Dole International Food for Education Program signed an MOU that has led to improved interagency collaboration and school feeding programs that seek to further the achievements in access to quality education and improved literacy, food security, and nutrition – especially for girls. There are two priority countries -- Mozambique and Guatemala—and an additional 15 countries that have both USAID/Education and McGovern-programs.
2. School feeding can act as a compliment to learning. Effects can result in spending more time in school, enhanced learning in school, or sometimes both. School feeding generally has the biggest impact on children coming from the poorest households.
3. Flexibility is key. Successful school feeding programs require a public sector with clearly stated education goals and an established monitoring system, which allows for flexibility to achieve the goals, funders who encourage a culture of innovation, research, and development, and who align incentives for understanding and reporting failures, and implementers who plan for scale from the start, and constantly improve using data analysis
4. The question of sustainability and the involvement of the host-country government is critical to the success of USAID and USDA’s coordination efforts. More developed countries generally have lower costs for school feeding programs (usually between 10-20% of the education budget); we need to help developing countries -- particularly through working with the Ministry responsible for school feeding—to build capacity and lower costs.

Speakers

• Dr. Aulo Gelli, International Food Policy Research Institute
• Christie Vilsack, USAID
• Anne Sellers, Catholic Relief Services
• Jocelyn Brown, USDA Office of Capacity Building & Development
• Eleanor Morefield, USDA Office of Capacity Building & Development

Presentations

1. Improving Access to School Meals and Quality Education Around the World (PDF 2.6MB)
2. Countries involved in USDA McGovern-Dole International Food For Education Projects (PDF 316KB)
3. School feeding in low-income settings: A snapshot of the evidence on education (PDF 1.1MB)

2. LAC Reads Capacity Program: Leveraging Data Science to Improve Systematic Reviews of Early-Grade Reading

This session discussed the innovative use of data science in processing a large amount of literature on early-grade reading in multiple languages in LAC region.

Key Takeaways

1. Systematic reviews present a comprehensive, unbiased, and reliable synthesis of the evidence surrounding a particular research question. Systematic reviews that focus on the effectiveness of development programs need: (1) A clear search protocol, (2) Transparent inclusion/exclusion criteria, (3) Transparent criteria for assessing quality, and (4) A thorough analysis and reporting of findings (Waddington et al., 2012)
2. Systematic reviews that include a broad range of evidence, as opposed to focusing on a narrow research question, will allow us to better understand what works in improving reading outcomes and why, and improve our understanding about the mechanism of how children learn how to read. At the same time it remains important to conduct a thorough appraisal of the quality of the literature. Thus, a systematic review on reading in the LAC region will maximize our knowledge on how to improve reading outcomes if this review includes a broad range of evidence and then weighs the findings on the basis of the quality of the evidence.
3. The LAC Reads Capacity Program systematic review focuses on synthesizing the evidence on improving early grade reading skills in the LAC region over the last 25 years (since Education for All) from 1990 – Present. All included evidence as well as evidence gap maps, summaries, and final reports will be included in an online database. The database will also include LAC region EGR resources collected from the LAC Reads Capacity Program’s 8 priority countries in the region.
4. Computer science has many promising techniques to reduce the time, cost and human error involved in systematic reviews. Machine learning facilitates decisions on relevance and data extraction, helps to capture data more systematically and from a broader range of sources, and is less subject to human error because it searches all documents with a single set of relevance parameters. Humans are critical for validation and for spot-checks, but the computer can greatly facilitate the work.

Speakers

• Michael Lisman, USAID
• Rebecca Stone, AIR
• Evgeny Klochikhin, AIR
• Thomas de Hoop, AIR

Presentations

1. LAC Reads Capacity Program: A systematic review of the early grade reading literature from LAC (PDF 924KB)

3. Monitoring Progress Towards Goals One and Three of the Education Strategy

How is USAID measuring progress towards the Goal One and Goal Three targets? What does the Office of Education need from you in order to facilitate this?

Two structured presentations were followed by an extended period for discussion and Q&A.

Speakers

• Ben Sylla, USAID/Washington
• Thomaz Alvares, MSI

Presentations

1. Monitoring Progress Towards the Reading and Access Targets of the USAID Education Strategy (PDF 499KB)

4. Sustainability through Host Country Ownership –Lessons Learned

This session discussed the opportunities and challenges of designing, implementing and sustaining a government-to-government education program. The session also discussed lessons learned from experiences in Ghana, Nepal and Ethiopia.

Key Takeaways

1. Government to Government (G2G) program assistance is most effective using well developed government financial and procurement systems, such as the production and distribution of textbooks
2. G2G should always be complemented by a technical assistance support that provides institutional and technical capacity building of the office and lower levels that are delivering the education services.
3. G2G requires a broad set of actors and various skill sets for both effective design and implementation, e.g., OFM, EXO, PDO, RLA, requires additional diplomacy and tact, blending within and between partner government and USAID cultures.
4. G2G can significantly reduce time and money for implementation; however, does not directly address the financial sustainability of the activity.

Speakers

• Suezan Lee, USAID/W
• Sarah Banashek, USAID/Ghana
• Tesfaye Kelemwork, USAID/Ethiopia
• Jayanti Subba, USAID/Nepal

Presentations

1. Government-to-Government (G2G) Education Programming in Nepal (PDF 262KB)
2. Government-to-Government Education Program in Ethiopia (PDF 3MB)
3. Sustainability through Host Country Ownership: Experience from Ghana (PDF 846KB)

5. Innovative Education Financing Modalities

This session presented recent innovative financing trends in education, while exploring the importance of domestic resource mobilization and what can be done in the education sector. Strengths and weaknesses of impact bonds and leveraging private sector investments, particularly in the affordable private school sector, were also discussed.

Key Takeaways

1. Given the estimated $39 billion annual financing gap in order to achieve SDG 4, it will mean that business as usual will not be sufficient.  Donors need to take a serious look at innovative financing modalities that strategically leverages both private and public sect funds for education.
2. Social/development impact bonds (S/DIB) experience has shown most promise in:
   1. Investments in prevention
   2. Focus on outcomes
   3. Incentivizes collaboration
   4. Drives performance management
   5. Builds a culture of monitoring and evaluation
3. However, there is mixed evidence that S/DIB attracts a large amount of financial resources, achieves scale and fosters innovation.  And it is too soon to tell whether S/DIB reduces government risk and sustains impact for the long term.
4. Pearson Affordable Learning Fund (PALF) is an education impact investor.  PALF provides various types of financing, i.e., ranging from angel investments to venture capital funds.  Donors can strategically work in partnership with organizations like PALF to help bring in private sector innovations into the public sphere. Donor can also work on regulatory issues that encourage more private investments in the education sector.
5. Most funds, to service primary and secondary education, will come from host country governments, that is domestic resource mobilization (DRM) primarily through taxes is critical.  The bulk of education funds will come from core taxes such as VAT, CIT and PIT raised at the national level, not likely to come from local property taxes.  USAID’s E3 Economic Policy team alongside with the Education team will work collaboratively so that the revenue generated from DRM can go to the education.

Speakers

• David Dodd, USAID
• Katelyn Donnelly, PALF
• Emily Gustafsson-Wright, Brookings Institute

Presentations

1. Funding for Education and the Addis Tax Initiative (PDF 794KB)
2. Whole System Reform + Systemic Innovation = Whole System Revolution (PDF 3.2MB)

6. Lessons Learned –Opportunities and Challenges of Scaling Up Education Programs

This session discussed the scaling up opportunities and challenges of education programs. The session also discussed the overall promising practices of scaling up from Brookings Institution Millions Learning Initiative. The session also dove into two country case examples in different phases of the scaling up education programs in Senegal and Kenya.

Key Takeaways

1. Scale-up doesn’t naturally happen and should be planned from the start of the program, that is it is incorporated into the design of the program
2. Scale-up inherently requires funders to allow for a larger degree of innovation --change, and research and development –tighter feedback loops for implementers
3. Data, evidence gathering and information system investment and sharing the information widely is critical
4. Cultivate and maintain champions from outset, including local and national policymakers, teachers and parents

Speakers

• Tamar Atinc, Brookings Institute
• Lisa Slifer-Mbacke, MSI
• Ben Piper, RTI

Presentations

1. How to Scale Learning? (PDF 7.2MB)
2. Scaling Up of Bilingual Curriculum in Senegal (PDF 1.3MB)
3. Scaling Up in Kenya: Initial Findings from Tusome (PDF 2.9MB)

7. Costing and Cost Effectiveness in Education Programs –Current Opportunities and Challenges

This session discussed the importance of collecting and analyzing costing information for policymakers. The challenges and solutions of collecting cost in the USAID context were also discussed. A recent cost effectiveness study from Mozambique was shared.

Key Takeaways

1. Rationale for costing and cost effective analysis is that it allows us to understand per unit costs and cost drivers as well as to compare various program options which will improve program design as well as to make a better case to our stakeholders of our investments in education.
2. Key barriers to conduct costing and cost effectiveness analysis are: (i) lack of data (cost and impact), (ii) staff capacity to collect data and conduct analysis, and (iii) lack of aligning the cost information with decision points of the program cycle.
3. USAID is piloting cost collection through E3 umbrella IDIQs –ABE Access and ABE ACR.
4. The current challenge of collecting cost information at USAID is to align the CLIN codes with the ingredient method.  Currently, for early grade reading programs there are three main areas of cost collection that has been identified:  (i) Management, (ii) Development and (iii) Implementation from which the CLIN codes can potentially be aligned to.

Speakers

• Meghan Mahoney, J-PAL, Department of Economics, MIT
• Chelsea Lehman, RTI
• Antonio Francisco, USAID/Mozambique

Presentations

1. Cost-Effectiveness Considerations When Taking a Program to Scale (PDF 4.5MB)
2. Resources to Encourage Costing and Cost-Effectiveness Analysis (PDF 1.4MB)
3. Ingredients Costing: An Operations Perspective (PDF 111KB)
4. USAID Mozambique Presentation for the Global Education Summit on Cost Effectiveness (PDF 2.4MB)

10. Early Signs of Success in Higher Education Partnerships

U.S. universities and community colleges are at the forefront of international development; world-class faculty conduct groundbreaking research, train students for a competitive workforce, and connect their institutions to the rest of the world. This panel highlighted three partnerships in post-secondary education that have succeeded beyond expectations and ask them to review the early signs of and contributors to their success.

Key Takeaways

1. Both parties must be willing to make significant long-term financial and labor investments geared toward lasting sustainability of changes.
2. As the project develops, flexibility and open-mindedness are absolutely critical from both parties.
3. There needs to be buy-in from all levels of the institutions, from students to professors to administration.

Speakers

• Rosemary Ortlieb-Padgett, SUNY Nassau Community College
• Raif Shwayri, Al-Kafaat Foundation
• Samantha Alvis, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities
• Dave Hansen, Ohio State University (iAGRI program)
• Ezra Simon, USAID/Vietnam

Presentations

1. Early Signs of Success in Higher Education Partnerships (PDF 307KB)
2. Early Sign of Success: Leassons from iAGRI (PDF 450KB)

11. Let Girls Learn

This session presented and clarified the Let Girls Learn initiative’s goals and strategies, provided a platform for integration and reporting into education programming and shared the latest research findings on education of adolescent populations along with the approaches adopted by other donors.

Speakers

• Yolande Miller-Grandvaux, USAID/Washington
• Susan Markham, USAID/Washington
• Christie Vilsack, USAID/Washington
• Anna French, DFID
• Natasha de Marcken, USAID/Pakistan
• Mariella Ruiz , USAID/Uganda
• Michelle Chen, USAID/Malawi

Presentations

1. Lessons from the GEC: Adolescent Girls (PDF 3.6MB)
2. Countering Violent Extremism and Education (PDF 1.7MB)
3. Let Girls Learn in Pakistan (PDF 4.5MB)

12. Girls Education? Seriously? How about Gender Transformative Education?

This session took a hard look at what we have done to integrate gender into education programming. It relied on actual representation of issues and opportunities related to promoting gender equality and reducing gender-based violence through the three goals of our education strategy.

Speakers

• Yolande MIller-Grandvaux, USAID
• Felicla Wilson, USAID
• Andre Bertone, FHI 360

Presentations

1. School-Related Gender Based Violence (PDF 1.6MB)
2. Gender at USAID (PDF 1.5MB)
3. Girls Education? Seriously?!? How About Gender-Transformative Education (PDF 371KB)

13. Myths, Realities and Countering Violent Extremism Through Education

This session debunked the myths and perceptions related to the drivers of violent extremism; presented the strategies used in countering MS 13 and Al Shabab; shared the current USG policy framework that supports education and CVE approaches; and focused on integration of CVE into education programming.

Speakers

• Saji Pralis, Search for Common Grounds
• Stephanie Kendall, USAID/ME
• Angela Martin, USAID/AFR
• Kristen Cordell, USAID/OAPA
• Nancy Taggart, EDC​

Presentations

1. From MS13 to Al-Shabab: Similarities and Differences in Resiliency Factors for Youth Living with High Levels of Violence (PDF 301KB)
2. Countering Violent Extremism and Education (PDF 1.7MB)

14. Applying Principles of Positive Youth Development to Improve Outcomes in Education

This session discussed the underpinnings of the positive youth development (PYD), an assets-based approach to youth development, and reviewed examples of how USAID and other donors have introduced PYD in the education sector.

Key Takeaways

1. Positive Youth Development (PYD) is a philosophy that encourages youth engagement, the building of youth assets, and the creation of youth-friendly systems.
2. It is never too early and never too late to implement PYD programs for children and youth – there are unique skills that are being built at all stages of development.
3. There are a number of different PYD frameworks that have been found effective at reducing risk behaviors and increasing youth assets and skills.
4. PYD approaches can be successfully integrated into formal and non-formal education programs (including youth centers) – this has been shown to be true in developed and developing countries.
5. Measurement of PYD outcomes is becoming more advanced as tools are developed and tested.

Speakers

• Richard Catalano, University of Washington
• Rachel Surkin, IREX
• Raya Abu Ziad, IREX 
• Ana Florez, FHI360
• Michelle Feist FHI360
• Christy Olenik, Making Cents

Presentations

1. Positive Youth Development History and Programs that Affect Substance Use and Delinquency (PDF 7MB)
2. PYD in the Education System: Examples in the U.S. and El Salvador (PDF 1.8MB)/li>
3. PYD and Non-Formal Education Programs (PDF 1.8MB)

15. Leveraging Goal One Data: New Opportunities and Resources

Learn about and provide input into new and emerging resources designed to improve the quality and public availability of Goal One learning assessment data. Topics included Goal One Program Results Briefs, harmonized microdata files, the USAID SART data system, and the New EGRA Toolkit.

Speakers

• Thomaz Alvares, MSI
• Roger Stanton, Optimal Solutions Group, LLC
• Rebecca Rhodes, USAID

Presentations

1. Discussion about Data Tools: Goal One Project Briefs (PDF 614KB)
2. Strategy-wide Harmonization for Reporting: Creating Public Data and Documentation (PDF 398KB)
3. A Toolkit for EGRA Administration (PDF 155KB)