RFI -685- Equitable Access to education in Southern Senegal.pdf

Request for Information (RFI)

Equitable Access to Education in Southern Senegal

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Document Type:

Number:

Issuance Date:

Closing Date:

Closing Time:

Activity Title:

Request for Information (RFI)

RFI-685-17-0000002

March 6 2017

March 27, 2017

5:00 PM Local Senegal Time Access to Education Activity

This USAID/Senegal Request for Information (RFI) is issued for the purpose of providing stakeholders an opportunity to review, comment, suggest, and enhance areas in the attached draft program description (PD) for the USAID/Senegal activity: Equitable Access to Education in

Southern Senegal

The Equitable Access to Education in Southern Senegal Activity is expected to be a five-year program with an approximate ceiling of $20,000,000 to $25,000,000, subject to availability of funds. It will aim at providing increased equitable access to education to girls and boys aged approximately 9 to 16 living in the crisis-affected Casamance regions (Ziguinchor, Sedhiou, Kolda) and Kedougou region. Specifically, this activity seeks to:

Offer complementary education services that provide basic education that is responsive to communities’ needs, Ensure that formal basic education is responsive to communities’ needs, Increase transition from primary to middle school, and

Support efforts that enable families and caregivers to enroll out-of-school children in responsive education services

As appropriate, USAID/Senegal will incorporate responses to the RFI into the development of the PD that may lead to a formal solicitation. The attached draft PD presents the current draft objectives and key elements of the activity. USAID/Senegal may significantly revise this proposed new activity and planned solicitation resulting from the comments received and further internal discussions.

This RFI is issued solely for information and planning purposes and does not constitute a

Request for Applications or Proposals (RFA/RFP). Responses to this RFI shall not be portrayed as proposals and will not be accepted by the U.S. Government (USG) to form a binding agreement. This RFI is not to be construed as a commitment by the USG to issue any solicitation or ultimately award of an assistance agreement on the basis of this RFI, or to pay for any information submitted as a result of this request. Responders are solely responsible for all expenses associated with responding to this RFI.

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If the requirement is released in the form of an RFA, it will be synopsized in, but not limited to, grants.gov and Agency websites. It is the potential responder’s responsibility to monitor the above forums for the release of any further information.

It should be noted that responding to or providing comment on this RFI will not give any advantage to any organization in any subsequent procurement. USAID/Senegal will not provide answers to any question submitted in response to this request.

By issuing the draft for comment, USAID/Senegal aims to consult with the broad community of actors involved with democracy and governance services. Your comments are requested to help refine the PD to ensure clarity, maximum development impact, sound coordination with existing activities, and alignment with the Government of Senegal’s top priorities. Please ensure your comments are concise and specific to information included within the draft PD. While there are no limits on the length of submissions accepted, we value concise, issue-specific responses with reference to page and section numbers in the draft PD.

Areas of particular interest include:

1) Is our theory of change clear and inclusive of the key challenges for access to education for children in the target regions? From your perspectives, are there any gaps that we have not addressed?

2) Are the expected outcomes clear and realistic? If not, please elaborate

3) How do you see the use of complementary basic education services, in support of the formal education system, as a way of addressing the challenges of access to education for out of school youth in our targeted areas?

4) How do you see the use of life skills as a way of making education more relevant and responsive to communities’ needs?

5) Have we identified useful M&E approaches to accurately reflect our programmatic results? Are there different or further approaches we could consider to strengthen our ability to collaborate, learn, and adapt?

Please address your comments and questions to Khady Sadio and send them no later than the closing date shown above to ksadio@usaid.gov with a copy to:

sba@usaid.gov lgronhovd@usaid.gov cmills@usaid.gov mailto:ksadio@usaid.gov mailto:sba@usaid.gov mailto:lgronhovd@usaid.gov mailto:cmills@usaid.gov

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Annexes:

Annex A: Draft Program Description: Equitable Access to Education in Southern Senegal

Equitable Access to Education in Southern Senegal Solicitation

1. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

1.1 Summary

Title: Equitable Access to Education in Southern Senegal

Purpose: Girls and boys aged approximately 9 to 16 in the Casamance and Kedougou regions of Senegal have equitable access to relevant basic education opportunities that develop essential life skills.

Scope: The Equitable Access to Education in Southern Senegal program will target girls and boys aged approximately 9 to 16 living in the crisis-affected Casamance regions

(Ziguinchor, Sedhiou, Kolda) and Kedougou region. A minimum of 270,000 girls and boys will benefit from increased equitable access to education, including at least 24,000 girls and boys who gain new access to education opportunities.

1.2 Context: Conflict in Southern Senegal

Longstanding tensions between the Government of Senegal (GOS) and the Movement of

Democratic Forces of the Casamance (MFDC) and emerging tensions between the mining industry and local communities in Kedougou have stifled development in the southern regions of

Senegal and adversely affected access to education. The root grievances of the Casamance population are deeply ingrained in perceptions of exclusion and marginalization based on identity, culture, geographic, economic and social grounds. Similar sentiments are pervasive in

Kedougou, where a number of large mining companies have rapidly expanded mining operations, fueling discontent and resentment in the region.

The effects of these conflicts continue to have a negative impact on the lives of girls, boys and youth living in the affected regions. Insecurity, the installation of military camps and armed groups, as well as the growth in extractive industries in the South has led to an increase in violence against women and girls, leaving girls more vulnerable to violence, abuse and exploitation in their communities. Economic uncertainty throughout the regions has left households with limited financial capacity to cover the direct, indirect and opportunity costs of education. Furthermore, despite the reopening of nearly all of the schools that closed during the height of the conflict in the Casamance, schools still struggle to attract and retain both students and qualified teachers.

1.3 Problem Statement

As a result of inefficiencies in the education system, a lack of responsiveness to children and youth’s educational needs and the lingering effects of violent conflict in southern Senegal, children and youth ages 9 to 16 have limited access to relevant basic education opportunities that build essential life skills. As highlighted in the forthcoming USAID-commissioned Study of

SBU - PROCUREMENT SENSITIVE

Out of School Children and Youth in Senegal (2017), this has led to approximately 133,000 children and youth aged 6-16 (representing 22% of the school age population) being out of school in the four target regions.1 Of these out of school children and youth (OOSCY), more than half have never been to school, while the rest had been attending school but have dropped out.

Children who have never been to school

Of the approximately 80,000 children who have never been to school, there is a roughly equal number of boys and girls, although this varies by region. Analysis from USAID’s 2017 report shows that in some regions, primary and middle school aged girls are more likely than boys to have never been to school, while other regions show boys with roughly the same or higher rates.

Children who have dropped out of school

While preliminary Ministry of Education statistics for the 2015-2016 school year show that the primary gross enrollment rates in the southern regions are high, at 110.2%, the gross enrollment rates for middle school demonstrate a significant drop, averaging just 64.7%.2 This phenomenon begins with an increasing level of drop-outs as a child progresses through primary school cycle.

Throughout Senegal, the number of students from the same cohort who enroll in Cours d'Initiation (CI) shrinks year on year as they pass through the system. This trend has largely remained the same as that which was reflected in a 2009 study on basic education in Senegal.3

Updated calculations based on drop-out rates from the Ministry of Education’s draft 2016

Rapport National sur la Situation de l’Education show that only approximately half of a CI cohort is expected to stay in school until the end of the primary cycle.4 This national trend also holds true for the target regions, where USAID’s study noted a particularly high drop-out rate in the final two years of primary school. Student numbers continue to contract due to low transition rates from primary to middle school, ranging between 55% to 67% for Kedougou, Kolda, Sedhiou, and 82% for Ziguinchor.5 On a national level, this means that only approximately one third of the original cohort will transition to middle school. In addition to being generally low, the transition rate for girls lags behind that of boys in all of the target regions. By the end of the middle school cycle, the cohort has diminished further, and less than 10% will go on to finish

3ieme. On average, only a minute percentage of the original CI cohort will go on to pass the end of middle school exam.

Over the past 15 years, the Senegalese Ministry of Education (MoE) has made considerable efforts to diversify the education services available to its citizens. Despite these efforts, large numbers of children remain out of school and without pathways to obtaining a basic education.

USAID (forthcoming). Senegal Out of School Children and Youth Study.

Draft Rapport National sur la Situation de l'Éducation (RNSE) 2016. The RNSE is currently undergoing further updates and the official report will be published later in 2017.

“The Quality of Basic Education in Senegal: A Review” 14 April 2009, p. 4

USAID calculation based on preliminary Ministry of Education statistics for the 2015-2016 school year.

Draft RNSE 2016.

USAID’s forthcoming national study on out of school children and youth highlights the various challenges and barriers to accessing education in each region, recognizing that particularities in the various parts of the country have impacted families’ options and decisions about school.

1.4 Theory of Change and Activity Outcomes

USAID’s theory of change for this activity holds that:

if complementary education services provide basic education that is responsive to communities’ needs; and if formal education is responsive to communities’ needs; and if transition from primary to middle school is increased; and if families and caregivers enroll out-of-school children in responsive education services;

then girls and boys aged 9-16 living in the Casamance and Kedougou regions of

Senegal will have access to relevant basic education opportunities that develop essential life skills.

Based on this theory of change, USAID seeks to increase access to education for at least

270,000 boys and girls, of which at least 24,000 will be new enrollees. USAID believes that increasing equitable access to relevant basic education opportunities will contribute to preparing a segment of the adolescent population in Senegal to actively participate in the country’s political process, and foster dialogue among governing institutions and citizen groups in a way that mitigates conflict and crisis and strengthens transparent and democratic governance.

USAID has identified four outcomes that will be essential to achieving the activity’s purpose, as outlined in the logic model below and further elaborated in the following section.

1.5 Achieving Results

Outcome 1: Complementary education services provide basic education that is responsive to communities’ needs.

Under this Outcome, USAID seeks to support the provision of complementary basic education

(CBE) for out-of-school children and youth ages 9 to 16. CBE is intended to assist the Ministry of Education to complement or support the formal education system, by delivering instruction aligned to the formal curriculum in reading, math and essential life skills. CBE provides an accelerated, flexible, legitimate and recognized pathway into formal education system and/or professional or vocational training. In order to be responsive to communities’ needs, CBE should be available in sufficient quantity and meet minimum standards of quality and safety for basic education, including freedom from school-related gender based violence. This will require a mix of interventions that work to strengthen the MoE policy framework as well as to engage communities to voice their needs and expectations for complementary basic education services.

Strengthening the regulatory framework for CBE is expected to include defining the minimum standards for CBE operations, oversight, instruction and safety.

Given the context of the crisis-affected regions of the Casamance and Kedougou, it is important to recognize and build on current and past MoE efforts and the work of community-based organizations that are operational in the target zones and have built strong relationships with communities, and may be providing a limited array of complementary basic education services.

Community ownership, including by the MoE, of complementary education services will be critical to the success and sustainability of this outcome. It is also expected that interventions under this outcome will seek to serve the most marginalized out-of-school children and youth, especially girls, young mothers, and children with disabilities, with high-quality CBE services that are responsive to their needs.

Outcome 2: Formal basic education is responsive to communities’ needs.

In order to ensure that complementary education services are in fact complementary and do not create a parallel system of education in Senegal, it is critical to ensure that the formal basic education system is equally responsive to communities’ needs and expectations. USAID seeks to leverage previous investments in basic education (e.g. USAID/Education de Base (EDB), USAID/Education Priorité Qualité (EPQ), etc.) as well as apply promising approaches, materials and learning from CBE (Outcome 1) to achieve this outcome. Providing formal basic education that is responsive to communities may include a range of interventions to ensure that instructional content and practices build relevant life skills for learners and that the learning environment is safe. This includes reducing school-related gender based violence in the formal education system. USAID is seeking to support interventions that work with and through education authorities at every step in the process, and focus on building their capacity through targeted activities. It is also expected that strengthened capacity of MoE authorities will contribute to improved planning and a more equitable distribution of education resources, so that the formal education system has the absorptive capacity to enroll or re-enroll children into the formal education system and maintain them throughout the entire primary and middle school cycles.

Given communities’ high value for and ownership of formal education in the crisis-affected regions of the Casamance and Kedougou, interventions will build on and expand initiatives that bring education authorities and communities together to achieve the expected outcome of more responsive formal basic education services. Achievement of Outcome 2 will require coordination and synergy with the activities, programs and initiatives of the MoE, other donors as well as other USAID sectors.

Outcome 3: Transition from primary to middle school increased

Under this Outcome, USAID seeks to increase the transition rate from primary to middle school through focused strategies that target key institutional and performance-related barriers for children to complete primary school and enter middle school. Strategies should include working with local, regional and/or national authorities from relevant line ministries and administrative structures. This may include initiatives that resolve the issue of accessibility to middle school due to absence of birth registration, that reforms the end of primary cycle exams system and/or requirement (le Concours d’Entrée en 6ieme), or others that addresses region-specific institutional barriers.

Interventions under this outcome will also support community and/or MoE initiatives to provide remedial education to learners in the upper grades of primary school. Remedial education is expected to support the development of basic education skills and ensure that children are able to perform at grade-level. Remedial education initiatives may include support for children to be successful upon re-entry to the formal education system after completion of complementary basic education, support for students with special needs, support for students who are at risk of dropping out, or exam preparation for end of cycle exams.

Achievement of Outcome 3 will build on the focused support under Outcome 2 on the last two years of primary school, ensuring that formal education is responsive to learners’ needs so that girls and boys acquire the essential skills needed to complete primary school, pass the entry into middle school exam and successfully transition to middle schools. USAID may also support targeted pilots or special studies to identify a low-cost, scalable model for MoE or other education service providers to replicate.

Outcome 4: Families and caregivers enroll out-of-school children in responsive education services

In support of the previous three outcomes aimed at making education services more responsive, USAID seeks to support efforts that enable families and caregivers to enroll more children in both CBE and formal basic education. Providing education services that are responsive to parental, caregiver and community needs and adapted to local contexts will only be effective in increasing enrollment if parents and caregivers have the knowledge of new and adapted education services, if they value the available education service for all children and if they have the financial resources available. Equally for children who attend a daara (Koranic school), it is important that their caregivers and religious leaders have knowledge of and value the CBE and formal education services available in their communities so that they can ensure children can access these services and acquire essential basic education and life skills concurrent to their religious studies. USAID also supports increased engagement of youth to take positive actions to promote enrollment and retention in responsive education services.

Mobilizing communities on these topics will require a deep understanding of community beliefs, values and practices and is closely linked to efforts under Outcome 1, 2 and 3. USAID understands that when communities voice their needs for basic education services, and when service providers are responsive to those needs, parents, caregivers and religious leaders are more likely to value and support those education services.

Interventions under this Outcome may support initiatives to raise awareness of parents, caregivers and religious leaders’ knowledge of and value for expanded, responsive education services. USAID may also support local initiatives that increase the financial resources that families have available to spend on education, as well as interventions that specifically address socio-cultural barriers to basic education, children with disabilities, and children residing outside the home.

1.6 Required Approaches

● Conflict Sensitivity: USAID/Senegal requires partners to take into account conflict dynamics in all activities, and to demonstrate in their applications how they will do so throughout the implementation of the activity. Conflict sensitivity refers to the discipline and capacity of an organization to:

● Understand the conflict context in which programs are being implemented;

● Understand how the conflict context might affect programs and how programs might affect the conflict context;

● Act on this understanding to minimize risk of negative impacts on programs (i.e., staff, beneficiaries, communities, results) and the conflict dynamics; and

● Identify options for positively impacting the conflict context.

It is essential that partners implement programming under this award in a conflict-sensitive manner with upfront and continuing contextual analysis and monitoring that inform interventions throughout the life of the program. The Recipient may use the

USAID Rapid Education Risk Analysis tool to assist in an initial risk analysis. As a first step in activity implementation in crisis-affected environments like the southern regions of Senegal, USAID requires partners to conduct a Rapid Education Risk Analysis

(RERA) in order to ensure conflict sensitivity and adaptability are integrated into activity implementation.The tool is available at http://eccnetwork.net/wp-content/uploads/USAID-

RERA-v1.pdf.

http://eccnetwork.net/wp-content/uploads/USAID-RERA-v1.pdf http://eccnetwork.net/wp-content/uploads/USAID-RERA-v1.pdf

○ Rapid Education Risk Analysis: The RERA combines elements of conflict analysis, disaster risk analysis, and resilience analysis with a rapid education analysis. It consists of national or regional level mapping, stakeholder consultation and analysis of primary and secondary data sources carried out over two (2) to three (3) weeks. Primary data collection should be conducted only to fill gaps in knowledge based on analysis of available secondary data. It aims to capture general information about how the education system, learners and their communities interact with a dynamic multiple-risk environment, and how those risks interact. The findings of the RERA must be incorporated into the proposed interventions and delivery modalities for this award.

● Community-led/Local Solutions and Partnerships: It is critical that interventions under this activity be identified, developed and strengthened through a consultative process with beneficiaries in supported communities. Interventions should prioritize engagement at the community level, including engagement with civil society, parent teacher associations (PTAs), disabled persons organizations, local education authorities and stakeholders, religious institutions/leaders, traditional leaders, women, youth (both male and female), and local businesses. In addition, interventions should expand on existing community-supported initiatives in order to ensure sustained education service delivery. This activity is grounded in the reality that achieving and sustaining any development outcome depends on the contributions of multiple and interconnected actors, which includes the use of local systems. Interventions must therefore engage local institutions in every step of implementation, building technical and management capacity within targeted institutions and communities, working with or through host country systems when appropriate, and transferring managerial and activity implementation responsibility to local institutions where feasible.

Strategic partnerships are critical to USAID investments, and USAID also seeks to strengthen in-country partnerships and reinforce the inclusive approach to partnerships put forward by USAID’s Local Systems Framework. USAID therefore strongly encourages organizations considering submitting applications to explore the potential of forming partnerships or consortia with other institutions that have established expertise.

● Positive Youth Development: It is expected that this activity will be consistent with the goal of USAID’s Youth in Development Policy (2012): to improve the capacities and enable the aspirations of youth so that they can contribute to and benefit from more stable, democratic, and prosperous communities and nations6. This activity will be aligned to best practices in positive youth development and the seven guiding principles described in the Policy:

The USAID Youth in Development Policy, Oct 2012 can be found at:

http://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1870/Youth_in_Development_Policy.pdf http://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1870/Youth_in_Development_Policy.pdf http://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1870/Youth_in_Development_Policy.pdf

○ Recognize youth participation as vital for effective programs;

○ Invest in assets that build youth resilience;

○ Account for youth differences and commonalities;

○ Create second chance opportunities;

○ Involve and support mentors, families, and communities;

○ Pursue gender equality; and

○ Embrace innovation and technology by and for youth.

Applicants are expected to describe tangible and specific ways that Senegalese female and male youth will be engaged as active contributors and leaders in the implementation as opposed to passive beneficiaries.

● Inclusive Development: Under this activity, USAID/Senegal expects implementing partners to promote different aspects of inclusive development in education and integrate them within proposed strategies for meeting the outcomes. Partners are expected to demonstrate in their applications how they will do so throughout the implementation of the activity. The ultimate goal of inclusive development in education is to reform policies or practices that restrict equitable access to education based on gender, class, disability, ethnicity, language group, geographic location, religious affiliation, academic ability, or other factors that have been identified as the basis for exclusion. It is expected that the Recipient comply with the objectives of the USAID

Disability Policy7 and USAID’s Gender Equality and Female Empowerment Policy8 in performing the program under this grant or cooperative agreement. USAID/Senegal requires that contextual analyses conducted at the outset of this activity include an analysis of gender and disability.

● Layered and Integrated Assistance: USAID/Senegal encourages geographic layering, integration, and/or sequencing of development assistance programs within the same communities. Layering involves explicit and proactive coordination between development programs or coordination between development programs working in different sectors, to simultaneously address different facets of the shocks that stress community resilience and coping mechanisms. Integrated programs combine interventions from different sectors within a single program and coordinate them in ways that provide holistic interventions to address complex problems.

USAID’s Disability Policy can be found at: http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDABQ631.pdf

USAID’s Gender Equality and Female Empowerment Policy can be found at:

https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1865/GenderEqualityPolicy_0.pdf http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDABQ631.pdf http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDABQ631.pdf https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1865/GenderEqualityPolicy_0.pdf https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1865/GenderEqualityPolicy_0.pdf

● Synergy and Collaboration: Implementation of activities under this Award must be grounded in dynamic and productive partnerships and must ensure coordination of interventions between the Recipient, the MoE, USAID/Senegal, other donors, international NGOs or local NGOs working in the education sector and project beneficiaries.

1.7 Monitoring & Evaluation

There are two fundamental purposes to monitoring and evaluating the performance of this activity:

1. Reporting on activity progress:

● through the tracking of indicators on a monthly or quarterly basis to measure whether it is meeting specified targets; and

● through reporting on specified indicators using periodic performance monitoring and evaluation events held throughout implementation or through studies on specific topics identified by the implementing partner or USAID.

2. Capturing knowledge about:

● how the activity is progressing and the extent to which theories of change and their assumptions are still relevant and accurate; and

● whether external assumptions about the activity’s operating environment and the contextual factors that influence the activity’s performance remain valid and appropriate, as anticipated, throughout activity implementation.

To support progress reporting, the Recipient will develop a complexity-aware Activity

Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Plan (AMELP). The AMELP must define a sound and realistic approach to measure the quality, effectiveness, and outcomes of implementation of the activity keeping in mind the possibility for insecurity and limited access to certain geographic locations at certain times. The plan must describe the planned monitoring approach to project management and to measure progress towards the activity purpose, outcomes and results. The

AMELP will address data collection and reporting on the agreed upon indicators to track progress towards the achievement of activity goal. The monitoring plan must abide by best practices for monitoring, such as the use of unique identifiers. The Recipient will carry out special studies using appropriate complexity-aware monitoring methods such as most significant change, outcome harvesting, etc. to monitor a range of both intended and unintended outcomes resulting from this activity as well as contextual indicators.

The following indicators must be included in the AMELP:

Strategy Indicators (disaggregated by sex, age-group, and marginalized group)

Goal ● Total number of new entrants in primary, secondary schools or equivalent non-school based settings with USG support (disaggregated by sex and age)9

● Number of individual boys, girls, and youth enrolled in primary or secondary school (or non- formal equivalents of primary or secondary school) that are reached with USG education assistance (regardless of whether programming results in increased access)10

● Enrollment rate for middle school

● Percent of learners that demonstrate reading ability and comprehension of grade-level text at the end of complementary basic education with USG assistance11

● Percent of learners that demonstrate reading ability and comprehension of grade-level text at the end of primary school (or grade six, whichever comes sooner) with USG assistance12

Outcome 1 ● Percent of complementary basic education centers that meet minimum standards (to be defined in collaboration with the MoE)

Outcome 2 ● Percent of parents who perceive formal education as more responsive to their needs and expectations

● Percent of youth who perceive formal education as more responsive to their needs and expectations

Outcome 3 ● Transition rate from primary to middle school

● Percent of children who complete primary school in USG supported primary school

● Percent of children who complete complementary basic education in

USG-supported CBE center.

Outcome 4 ● Number of children enrolled in complementary basic education

● Percent of children in daaras who enroll in complementary basic education or formal education

For each indicator proposed, the AMELP will indicate targets and plans for the determination of baseline values and include a target that assures the reliability and validity of data collected, elaborate the process by which the indicators will be tracked and how monitoring processes and results will be used to inform activity management decisions. Proposed indicators should move

USAID Education Strategy Goal 3 standard indicator

Foreign Assistance Framework (FAF) indicator E.S. 1.3 & 1.4

Foreign Assistance Framework (FAF) indicator E.S. 1.1

Foreign Assistance Framework (FAF) indicator E.S. 1.2 beyond collecting data on inputs and outputs for the activity, and propose a limited number of relevant outcome-level indicators to measure and track the progress of the program in achieving the activity results in addition to those provided above. Proposed indicators should be gender-sensitive and must include the appropriate disaggregation including disaggregation by sex, age group, marginalized groups (e.g. children living with disabilities), and any other relevant fragility dimension (e.g., by ethnic group, religion, or geographical location).

The use of standard indicators is required, although Applicants may suggest a limited number of custom indicators in the AMELP. See Section 6 for a complete list of data and reporting required for this award.

USAID may contract an independent evaluation of this activity through a parallel mechanism that will be separately funded and managed by USAID. The Recipient may be required to collaborate with USAID/Senegal and an Evaluation Contractor on the following:

● Final Evaluation design to align with the activity design and implementation plan.

● Final selection of intervention areas (geographic) to enhance comparability of treatment and control cohorts (if applicable).

● Selection criteria and recruitment process for participants/schools/communities, including potential randomization of participants into treatment and control

(delayed treatment) cohorts (if applicable).

● Joint review of activity performance monitoring plan with an Evaluation

Contractor to ensure project monitoring data collection is sufficient to monitor changes in the activity design over time and implementation fidelity.

● Timing for the recruitment of participants, collection of data, and initiation of services to participants in compliance with USAID Evaluation Policy requirement that baseline data collection takes place before the start of the intervention.

● Participation in annual reviews of the performance monitoring plan and actuals, facilitated by the evaluation contractor.

1.8 Strategic Alignment to USAID and Senegalese Government Priorities

Interventions under this activity must be consistent with Goal 3 of the USAID Global Education

Strategy13 to increase equitable access to education in crisis and conflict environments, and the

Recipient is expected to implement interventions that are aligned to best practices and evidence on effective interventions to increase access to education.

This activity is also closely aligned with the MoE’s education sector strategy, Le Programme d’Amélioration de la Qualité, de l’Equité et de la Transparence (PAQUET), which runs from

2013-2025, and has been designed to support improvements in access to education in line with the government of Senegal’s vision.

The USAID Global Education Strategy can be found at: http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDACQ946.pdf http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDACQ946.pdf http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDACQ946.pdf

1.9 Coordination and Complementarity of Interventions with USAID Strategy, and USAID and Other Partner Activities

The Recipient should, to the extent possible, coordinate with ongoing USAID/Senegal supported activities in the target zones across other sectors, including health, agriculture, etc., to ensure complementarity and leveraging of resources. In particular, the Recipient is expected to collaborate closely with the implementing partner of USAID/Senegal’s recently launched

Governance for Local Development (USAID/GOLD) activity, including with respect to the selection of zones of intervention. USAID/GOLD has been designed to complement interventions in the education sector by increasing the capacity of local governments to improve the provision of services at the commune level. In areas where USAID/GOLD is operating, the

Recipient is expected to coordinate with that activity to ensure streamlined communication with local education authorities. The Recipient will also be expected to collaborate with any implementing partner(s) that USAID contracts with to carry out independent evaluations of this activity. Other donors and implementing partners are also active in the education in the target regions, and the Recipient must therefore coordinate with them in order to avoid duplication of efforts.