The Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education (MBSSE), David Moinina Sengeh, applauded the NGO Consortium for the excellent implementation of the Global Partnership For Education (GPE) initiative, but expressed disappointment with his ministry for failing to complete its own part of the project.
At the GPE final project closing and learning event yesterday, Wednesday 15 June at the Radisson Blu, Aberdeen the MBSSE Minister said, “that the consortium was a $6.7 million project, which was split in half and has the NGO consortium to do half and had the ministry to do the other half. It is disappointing to tell you that the Ministry still has about $1 million unspent and unused and yet we’re here to talk about the NGO consortium completely doing all the things that he was supposed to do, closing the project, doing reviews on that and being ready to move on to the next thing and yet as the ministry we have struggled with the implementation of many of the other components that we have to do.”
He added, “I take full responsibility as the as the head of that institution that we kind of achieve this.”
However, despite the setbacks, the Minister defiantly assured, “we will correct that, we will implement we’ll make sure that those resources go on to address many of these activities.”
He said the ministry “…will look internally and introspect and see what made [their] delivery of the same project slower.”
Adding, “the fact that you’ve been able to dedicate resources, human capacity, and time to do this project means we can learn from you. And it will be important that my team continues to learn from you and all of us will learn from you in terms of how you were able to deliver within the time that you deliver and by making sure that we stuck to those commitments.”
The Minister noted that this is a proud moment because “ when we started it when we talked about the vision many people didn’t know how it would work. Many people did not know whether it would work. Many people thought that it was not a great idea. Why would governments take the money and give it to some sort of NGO? But I think the vision that I had, and the hypothesis that we had, has been proven today.”
He said the hypothesis is if government and NGO development partners work together closely on a shared vision, a shared set of activities, then the children will win. So the children have won today.”
Explaining the achievements of the project based on the expected outcome, the Chief Party of the Consortium, Kalako Mondiwa said that in Pillar 1 of the project the Consortium raised awareness of COVID 19 and education response by applying age-appropriate gender-responsive, child-friend, and disability-friendly messaging approach in target schools and communities. He said with the use of small group discussion, over 2.5OOO home visits, 141 TV and radio programming and mass campaigns, 9O% of the project target was reached.
He further added that Pillar 2 which is inclusive and safe distance learning opportunities, the consortium established over 1,OOO community learning circles to improve children’s literacy and numeracy skills. This particularly targeted children with low learning outcomes following school closure. He said the end-line assessment shows that 44% of children in learning circles were able to read a paragraph against O% at baseline. Likewise, 6O% of children were able to do 3-digit number operations against a 2 % baseline.
Further adding that Pillar 3 which is a safe return to gender-sensitive and inclusive learning in schools the consortium in conjunction with the MBSSE trained teachers from each of the targeted schools on the government’s safety protocols. Also Supplied schools with COVID 19 infection prevention and control materials.
World Bank Rep, … Noting that the consortium is unique, working together to execute the GPE project. He said lots of data were collected throughout the project, which would be very helpful to the ministry in the decision-making process.
