SSA_2023_Zimbabwe_Evaluation Consultancy Service to Provide Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Support to the Leading Learning for Gender Equality Project in Zimbabwe.

Tender description

In Zimbabwe, following the delivery of the successful Connecting Classrooms Project, the British Council in collaboration with Colleges of Education and the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education (MoPSE) has rolled out the Leading learning for Gender Equality programme to all primary and secondary government schools through pre-service teacher training and in-service Continuing Professional Development. The project aims to improve learning outcomes for young people in school, especially girls in response to challenges faced with accessing education. Only 14% of girls in Zimbabwe complete upper secondary school, and only 1% of the poorest girls (UNICEF 2021). Most girls leave school soon after O-level, with many not even reaching secondary school and girls from poor families in rural areas are more likely to drop out of school, since daughters can bring lobola (bride price) and temporarily improve the family’s income. It has also been documented that gender bias of teachers and school leaders and the design of the learning environment negatively impacts girls’ academic performance and choice of field of study (World Bank 2021).<br /><br />The British Council is seeking to commission a consultant to: <br />Draw on a mix of quantitative and qualitative evidence to conduct an evaluation of the LL4GE project in Zimbabwe. The evaluation should focus on how the project has continued to evidence against the Theory of Change designed for the pilot phase of delivery in over 21 districts in the Zimbabwe and provide: <br />1. An overview of the project’s performance against four evaluation themes<br />2. An outline of lessons learned and/or best practices on project delivery in Zimbabwe.<br />3. Leverage the analysis to develop a set of actionable recommendations for the project.<br />4. Steps that the British Council in Zimbabwe could take to ensure that our Schools project planning, implementation and monitoring, evaluation and learning approaches are gender sensitive and gender transformative where possible in line with the project’s delivery model. <br />5. Support us with disseminating the results of the evaluation in relevant internal and external platforms to be identified and agreed with the successful supplier. <br /><br />Expected Deliverables:<br />The successful consultant will be expected to work closely with the implementation team in Zimbabwe and the Senior Evaluation Advisor of the British Council in Sub Saharan Africa, all of whom shall comprise the Evaluation Steering Committee. The British Council staff shall supervise the work of contracted consultants to conduct the evaluation and provides technical guidance to the evaluators. The successful bidder will deliver on:<br />• an inception report outlining finalised agreements, including evaluation questions, with the project team on:<br />o the scope of work,<br />o evaluation framework including the methodology for the evaluation,<br />o the quantitative/qualitative tools to be adopted for evaluation processes,<br />o approach to field implementation – including the sourcing, training and deployment of the field team, <br />o approach for data management and data analysis plan,<br />o a detailed workplan for the duration of the programme (based on approved timelines) with expected outputs.<br />• The conduct of field work with the collection and management of data from the field.<br />• An analysis of collected data with the generation of data tables for quantitative data and mapping of themes with accompanying evidence for qualitative data.<br />• A comprehensive draft report giving an overview of what has been done, findings that respond to the monitoring framework or evaluation questions, lessons captured, draft recommendations, and other key insights from the evaluation.<br />• Final Reports - analytical report in MS Word with findings, recommendations, and lessons learned covering the scope of the monitoring or evaluation exercise and a power point presentation with good visuals and info-graphs summarising the findings from the reports.<br /><br />