Final Evaluation of the Accelerated Primary Education Support (APES) Project

Terms of Reference

Final Evaluation of the Accelerated Primary Education Support (APES) Project -Consultancy

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has been present in Somalia since early 2004 and has since expanded its programme to Kenya in 2006 and to Ethiopia in 2011. 

Since 2004, NRC has demonstrated a regional competence and expertise in working with displaced and refugee populations. NRC has mainly focused on Somalis who are displaced by the ongoing conflict and more recently by the drought and famine. 

The Regional Office is based in Nairobi, Kenya with offices and operations in Somalia (Puntland, Somaliland and Mogadishu), Kenya (Dadaab and Molo) and Ethiopia (Addis Ababa and Dolo Ado).

1. Introduction

The APES project was conceptualized to avert the risk of an entire generation of children in Somalia missing education, recognizing the critical potential of education in accelerating democratization, peace building and poverty reduction. 

The Action was designed to increase the number of school age children, in particular from poor and marginalized communities and girls, accessing and completing quality primary education.

The project has been implemented by three partners: Norwegian Refugee Council as lead agency, Save the Children Denmark and Concern Worldwide. 

NRC has been implementing the project in Somaliland, Puntland and South Central while also responsible for the overall project management. SCD operates in both Somaliland (all regions) and in Puntland (Karkar Region) while Concern Worldwide operates in South Central Somalia. 

Respective ministries of Puntland and Somaliland and South Central, education umbrellas in South Central and their operational structures at region and district levels and CECs of schools were involved in the implementation of the APES project.

2. Purpose and Objectives of the Evaluation:

The overall purpose of the evaluation is to measure to what extent the APES programme has fully implemented the planned activities, delivered outputs and attained outcomes and specifically measuring programme results. 

The evaluation will contribute to shared learning and provide accountability to partners, beneficiaries and donors. 

The evaluation will come up with findings, lessons learned, and recommendations which will be shared with key stakeholders of the project and used by the implementing agencies to guide and inform future similar projects and programs. 

The evaluation will generate substantive evidence based knowledge, by identifying best practices and lessons learned that could be useful to other development interventions at national (scale up) and international level (replicability).

The evaluation will assess the performance of the project against key parameters including the project’s relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, timelines of activity implementation, and its strengths and weaknesses.

3. Evaluation Approach

The evaluation will be undertaken through a combination of qualitative and quantitative techniques that will be used to gather data and information from main stakeholders of the project, mainly target groups, parents, MOEs and other actors engaged in similar programs, and project staff of partners.

The data and information gathered will be systematically analyzed and presented following the five evaluation criteria mentioned above. 

The evaluation approach should be developed and implemented in three main phases: An Inception Phase, a Field Investigation Phase and a Synthesis and Feedback Phase.

4. Expertise Required

The following attributes are requirements for the selection of the evaluation team: Lead Consultant and Local Consultants

• Postgraduate qualification (Masters or above) in Education or in a discipline relevant to this assignment with a minimum of 15 years experience.
• Experience in the evaluation of technical assistance project, preferably EC-funded projects, particularly those under the education portfolio;
• Proven capacity in working across the levels of institutions from policy, to legislation and organizations and ability to assess institutional capacity and incentives;
• Excellent report writing skills

5. Time Frame

• Consultants will come with a technical proposal indicating the number of days (30 days max) for the consultancy work with a realistic action plan. The date and timeframe for executing the evaluation will be jointly agreed between the consultants and NRC.

However, the evaluation field work should ideally be completed before the end of 2012.

Applications for the Consultant can be applied separately or as a team or by a firm. 

If the Consultant plans to undertake the evaluation together with co-consultant (s) the CV (s) shall be presented during application. 

All applications should be submitted electronically through www.nrc.no. 

The deadline for submission is on Monday 26th November 2012.

For the complete terms of reference of the evaluation and for more details on the submission of an application, please visit: www.nrc.no