Aarambha Project, Nepal

This Spotlight Brief is one of papers looking at Value for Money (VfM) of education interventions. It reviews the emergent findings in VfM achieved for the interventions of the Aarambha project. This project is being implemented in Nepal by People in Need (PIN) and is funded by UK Aid through the Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC). Based on its Year 1 endline evaluation, it assesses intervention costs against the benefits delivered by exploring the relevance, cost-effectiveness and sustainability of the interventions. It covers the inception period and the first phase of implementation which took place between November 2018 and December 2020. It is primarily aimed at GEC project partners, wider implementors and non-governmental organisations interested in understanding VfM in education programming within a similar context.1 The findings within this brief build on the evaluation of the Aarambha project and are specific to this project. However, the recommendations are more generic and are aimed at practitioners and others interested in future programming within a similar context.

1. Introduction

The Aarambha project aims to support up to 8,500 married, out-of-school, adolescent girls from the central Terai region, one of the poorest regions of Nepal, with the highest rates of illiteracy, innumeracy, and early marriage. The project is running from 2018 to 2024.

The project reached 1,709 girls in the first year of implementation, addressing low social status, especially for girls from Muslims and Dalit groups. Low social status is the main barrier impeding girls’ safety, health and access to education.

The project activities are centred on the provision of literacy, numeracy and life skills through Community Learning Centres.

In response to COVID-19, the project also started implementing distance teaching and learning activities using mobile phones. In addition, the project has been working with community members (Change Champions) to engage parents, communities and local governments through parental workshops and radio programmes aimed at addressing harmful social norms and raising awareness of the importance of educating girls.

The Gec Vfm Framework

When reviewing VfM for GEC projects, the GEC VfM framework is applied systematically, drawing on evidence from the endline evaluation findings and project staff interviews. The VfM framework uses four of the OECD DAC criteria:

1. Relevance – whether the project invested in the right activities and modalities to respond to the needs and barriers of the girls identified, with optimal resources allocated to them.

2. (Cost)-effectiveness – whether the project produced the expected outcomes at an optimal cost for the girls and others reached by the project.

3. Efficiency – whether the project delivery was on time, on budget and with good quality processes.

4. Sustainability – whether there has been a long-term continuation of outcomes for the girls and others reached by the project and whether there has been replication and/or scale-up or adoption without FCDO funding.

Read more about the GEC VfM framework and review methodology here

Key Findings From The Vfm Review 2

• To date, the Aarambha project has generated some good VfM and offers strong potential as the project continues to operate. Specifically, the Community Learning Classes and distance teaching and learning activities have offered good VfM – being highly relevant in addressing parental barriers and cost-effective in leading to learning gains in flexible combined modalities despite disruption brought about by COVID-19.

• The radio programmes responding to COVID-19 also appear to be good value for money. However, although they have been highly economical (£3 per girl) and relevant and created positive shifts in attitudes around social norms it is too soon to assess their ability to shift behaviours.

• This project supports some young women who move to inlaws’ houses and may be vulnerable to gender-based violence. To improve their welfare, it is important to change attitudes to education, work, and marriage. In doing this the VfM of the project is enhanced by sustaining non-formal education pathways for continued education, skills development and local employment. These pathways help break through social norms around child marriage, education and gender-based violence and provide longer-term benefits directly to the girls and future generations. To improve the impact and VfM of the project, the review suggests the following adjustments (set out in order of ease and priority, high dowry prices being the most challenging barrier to shift):

1. Adapting the curriculum to meet girls’ abilities

2. Continuing the hybrid mode of Community Learning Centres and distance teaching and learning activities

3. Continuing radio programmes

4. Adapting parental workshops and Change Champions to optimise VfM

5. Improving re-enrolment by providing greater vocational activities for older girls and addressing the barriers of high dowry prices for older, more educated girls and absenteeism (during harvest times and festivals).

This VfM review draws on evidence from project’s endline evaluation of the first cohort and interviews with the project team. As described in the project baseline evaluation report, the project evaluation undertook a quasi-experimental approach tracking 400 married out-of-school adolescent girls in treatment and comparison groups across each evaluation point of data collection – baseline and cohort endline each year – tracking pathways of learning and transition. In addition, a mixed-method approach has been used comprising a quantitative household survey, qualitative focus group discussions and key informant interviews with various stakeholders.

2. What have the project costs been so far?

The expenditure covers the inception phase (from November 2018 to September 2019) and the project’s first year of implementation (cohort 1 from September 2019 to December 2020). It must be noted that any unit cost analysis overstates the costs (and under-reports VfM) because it includes inception phase costs that should be spread over the duration of the project life cycle. Over time, the average cost per girl should decrease and these figures will be collected to demonstrate this trend.

Figure 1 illustrates the percentage expenditure breakdown by the main interventions.3 The indirect overheads have been fully allocated across activities based on project estimates of staff time spent on activities to indicate the reality on the ground of actual implementation costs. The cost per girl for cohort 1 and inception phase averages £219.

To put this figure cost into context, the average expenditure per student for the academic year 2019/2020 for a secondary school in Nepal was £155. 4 While this is indicative, it is not a like-for-like comparison as the Aarambha project does not operate in the formal school setting. The project also benefits from broader outcomes beyond learning but does not reap the benefits of economies of scale inherent in formal school settings.

2 The purpose of the VfM reviews is not to question project aims and objectives. Instead, it is to examine the evidence from a project to judge the degree to which interventions provided value for money.The reviews also recognise that projects operate in different contexts, which means the findings are not generalisable. Furthermore,VfM is one dimension, among many, by which the relative success of programming can be judged.

3 The expenditure that is analysed in this report covers 68% of expenditure on the main activities. Curriculum support and other learning activities are not included in this expenditure or analysis.

4 Source: Peano 2020 EMIS database. Ministry of Education Science and Technology. ASIP & AWPB (CEHRD 2019c) cited in Peano 2020.

Also, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the project had to introduce remote teaching and learning methodologies, potentially differentiating it from formal schooling. And finally, the Aarambha projects supports very marginalised girls, which results in higher unit costs than an average learner in Nepal. This indicates a good equity finding for Aarambha.

The distance teaching and learning classes conducted by the project through mobile phones were a relatively new concept and relevant means of adapting to home-schooling, comprising almost 20% of the total budget. According to the qualitative findings from the endline evaluation, girls and parents found that the telephone learning sessions (three to four sessions per week lasting 10 to 15 minutes) were an effective adaptation to COVID-19 school closures. For some girls, distance teaching and learning classes were more relevant than Community Learning Classes, as indicated by their low attendance for the Community Learning Classes. In the evaluation, girls said that in-laws were more supportive of this mode of education as they could see it taking place. However, for some girls, accessing distance teaching and learning was a challenge as they lacked a strong phone network and access to phones, and struggled to take time away from house chores. A mixture of phone support, one-to-one coaching and weekly home visits would be more relevant in the future.