Among our contingent at the UK Evaluation Society conference this year, our Evaluation and Research consultant, Hannah Allroggen, presented her insights on balancing evaluation and accountability needs on our evaluation of the Girls’ Education Challenge. In this blog, she reflects on her presentation and the key lessons she took from her work.
Education is a fundamental right, yet it remains out of reach for millions of girls. To bridge this gap, The Girls’ Education Challenge Fund (GEC) – the largest global girls’ education initiative to date funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) – worked across 17 countries with the aim of improving educational opportunities for over 1.6 million marginalised girls around the world.
Twelve years, 41 GEC projects and eight evaluation studies later, our independent evaluation team has produced the Lessons Learned study, where we assessed the evolution of the GEC’s approach to marginalisation and to evaluation and learning over the lifetime of the programme.
Having worked across various GEC studies, including Educating girls with disabilities, the Value for Money of educating the most marginalised girls, and the Lessons Learned Study, we saw what worked and what didn’t work across the two phases of GEC, reflecting on the most prominent learnings on balancing evaluation and accountability needs.
Lesson 1: Navigating the complexities of Payment by Results
One of the key lessons from the GEC evaluation was the implications of using a Payment By Results (PbR) mechanism. Initially introduced to foster accountability, PbR required projects to demonstrate statistically significant improvements in girls’ literacy and numeracy in order to be paid. This approach encouraged rigorous data collection on girl’s learning outcomes and showed that measuring learning is feasible, even in complex operating environments.
However, this focus on numbers drove a standardised and quantitative approach to impact evaluation in the early years of the GEC. This sometimes overshadowed more qualitative research on why changes in girls’ learning outcomes were happening.
The shift away from PbR in the second phase of the GEC allowed for a more holistic approach to evaluation, emphasising the importance of qualitative data. This change allowed stakeholders to dive deeper into the factors influencing learning outcomes, leading to richer insights that informed future programme design and adaptation.
Lesson 2: The power of longitudinal impact studies
With a 12-year timeframe, the GEC was uniquely positioned to follow beneficiary girls, providing a comprehensive view of how education shaped their futures. Conducting a longitudinal impact evaluation allowed selected projects to track the long-term effects of the GEC on girls’ lives as they progressed through adolescence and adulthood. This approach also accounted for socio-economic, cultural and political factors that influence their prosperity, health and empowerment.
While such evaluations demand significant time and resources, they offer insights that other evaluations alone cannot capture by looking into the broader impacts of a project’s interventions beyond the life of a project. By continuing to invest in longitudinal studies, we can assess the impact of educational programmes and adapt strategies to ensure that future initiatives are both effective and responsive to the evolving needs of the communities they serve.
Discover more evaluation insights and lessons learned from GEC in our latest study.
Hannah Allroggen
Hannah Allroggen is a Consultant in the Evaluation and Research Practice with a thematic focus on health, development, education and humanitarian response.
She has supported international teams on a variety of evaluation and research projects. Hannah’s experience includes evaluation design, developing the theory of change and logic of intervention, and qualitative data collection, particularly creating discussion guides and survey tools as well as delivering in-country enumerator training.
She has worked on the GEC across various studies including a study on transition pathways for girls, a study focused on educating girls with disabilities, the VfM study on educating the most marginalised girls and the Lessons Learned Study.