Formative Evaluation of the United Nations Girls' Education Initiative (UNGEI)

Abstract

As you may be aware, the evaluation of the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative was completed earlier in the year (February) and shared with the Global Advisory Committee (GAC) last week (May 2012) in Kampala, Uganda.

Conducted ten years after the establishment of UNGEI as a partnership to promote and support girls’ education, the evaluation sought to establish a baseline for UNGEI vis a vis the three UNGEI outcome areas (i. Advocating for and institutionalizing policy and for girls’ education and gender equality; ii. Identifying and disseminating good practice in girls’ education; iii. Establishing a strong partnership for girls education) and to document UNGEI achievements and successes and challenges; and to examine interactions between the global, country and regional levels of the partnership. In addition, the proposed UNGEI Monitoring and Evaluation Framework which will form the basis for future assessment of progress was validated through the evaluation process.

The evaluation took place over a period of nine months. A mapping of 57 countries which were on record as having an active partnership or some UNGEI-led activities was conducted, as well as four case studies - Egypt, Nepal, Nigeria, and Uganda – and an evaluation of the East Asia and the Pacific (EAP) regional partnership.

A summary of evaluation findings, recommendations, and a management response is attached. The evaluation of the partnership was commissioned by the GAC, managed by the UNICEF Evaluation Office and M&E Officers from case study countries, and quality assured by reference groups for each level (for the global study, the regional study, and four reference groups for the country studies).

This report documents the findings and recommendations of the formative evaluation of the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI). The evaluation took place in 2011, ten years after the establishment of UNGEI and sought to:  Establish a baseline for UNGEI...

Description

UNGEI was launched in 2000 at the World Education Forum in Dakar with the purpose of supporting the achievement of Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 3 on promoting gender equality and empowering women. This evaluation takes place 10 years after UNGEI was established and has two main objectives, as noted in the terms of reference:

“To establish a baseline against which progress towards achieving results can be measured in the future” and To explore “the extent to which the UNGEI partnership is achieving its intended outcomes at country level, and the extent to which the global efforts are contributing to the effectiveness and efficiency of the UNGEI partnership.”

The full terms of reference for the evaluation can be found in Annex 1. The evaluation uses UNGEI’s three outcome areas as a foundation for examining progress and establishing the baseline. The country and regional assessments that were part of this evaluation therefore sought to assess the progress in these outcome areas. Specifically, this related to assessing the extent to which:

1. Policies that promote girls’ education and gender equality are in existence;
2. Good practices in facilitating girls’ education and gender equality are known and institutionalized; and
3. UNGEI facilitates an effective partnership for girls’ education and gender equality.

Access the report and management response here.