GPE has just released a new evaluation which investigated the relevance, effectiveness and efficiency of GPE support to sector planning, especially through its education sector plan development grants (ESPDG).
The evaluation draws evidence from a number of country evaluations and stakeholders interviews to further explore the conclusions of the desk study carried out last year.
The evaluation presents four main conclusions that reveal the strengths and weaknesses of GPE’s support to planning and provide insights for the future.
- The quality of sector plans has improved since 2016, when significant changes were introduced to GPE’s model.
Sector plan development grants and their related application requirements have contributed significantly to this increase in quality. Plans are now meeting a greater number of quality standards. Before 2016, most plans met less than five out of the seven GPE quality standards, versus at least six standards after 2016.
More plans are now “achievable” –financially sustainable, feasible and monitorable– and “strategic” –how they address learning, equity and efficiency– the two least-fulfilled criteria before 2016, especially in fragile contexts.
There are also improvements in quality for countries with two consecutive plans, between their first and second plans.
Overall, remaining issues include the lack of prioritization, overambitious objectives in comparison to the funding available, and short implementation timelines.
- Different modalities of support are strategically relevant to GPE’s aim of helping countries develop quality plans.
The ESPDG funding has served as an incentive for partner countries to receive implementation grants, and our quality assurance processes have had a consistently positive influence on sector plan development across different contexts.
Education sector analyses, financed through ESPDGs, are increasingly and better used in sector planning processes. The more recent sector plans are based on better quality and more up-to-date data from these analyses. The ESPDG mechanism and funding also enabled a more inclusive and participatory approach to sector plan preparation, with resources used for consultations at both the national and sub-national levels, and advocacy conducted for more inclusive dialog.