“Scaling-up Innovative Gender Inclusion and Safeguarding Approaches in Education: Evidence from Malawi, Ethiopia and Uganda” is a partnership research project supported by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX) a joint endeavour with the International Development Research Center (IDRC), Canada.
This project intends to address the barriers faced by children, particularly girls, in accessing, achieving, participating in and completing school. Scaling successful innovations in these areas remains a challenge and more knowledge is needed on how to scale effectively. Fragility around scale-up may largely be linked to lack of capacity, lack of resourcing or inability by governments to make robust decisions to enable school leaders and teachers to adopt new practices.
Our project, will mobilise evidence across Ethiopia, Malawi and Uganda on how gender equality, inclusion (GEI) and safeguarding scale-up happens in education including what incentivizes or impedes it, and will contribute to existing international evidence and practice of scale-up globally. It builds on four GEI interventions previously implemented in the three countries, each one at varying stages of scale-up by the relevant governments. These include continuing professional development of teachers, school leaders and supervisors; school performance review and improvement planning; strengthening and using national education standards; and community participation. These interventions seek to address the intersecting barriers that girls, children with disabilities and other marginalised children face in acquiring quality education.
The project inception event was a key activity that established a firm foundation and mapped stakeholders to establish learning partners that will be engaged in the knowledge exchange and learning activities.
On August 6th 2024, the project was launched in Wolaita Sodo, South Ethiopia region. 60 participants attended from the Ministry of Education, Basic Education Network, South Ethiopia Regional Education Bureau, Wolaita Sodo University, Zonal Education Department Head and senior officials, Head of Zonal Finance and Economic Development, and from the four target districts heads, experts and school principals.
In the opening remarks, his excellency Dr Abebayehu Tadesse, Head of the South Ethiopia Region Education Bureau, said such an innovative research project will bring regional expertise and share best experiences across countries and enhance our education system professionally. As stated by Dr Abebayehu, the region believes that Link Education’s exertion in the region contributed a lot and at this stage, KIX will bring innovative scaling up and a long-lasting sustainable approach that would be one of our regional education bureau priorities in the coming years.
Following the opening remarks, an overview of the GPE KIX program in Ethiopia was delivered by the National KIX Coordinator: Abraham Menegistu – Project Management, Partnership and Resource Mobilization Team – the Minister of Education.
The event provided an opportunity for the attendees and learning partners to:
- Internalize the newly proposed project theory of change, activities and milestones;
- Discuss and reflect on the barriers that influence government scale-up of interventions; the enablers that influence government scale-up; good practice that transforms policy, pedagogy, leadership and community engagement; and lessons we can learn from the good practice scale-up for marginalized girls and children with disabilities.
- Review and agree on new commitment areas and milestones which will define priorities related to policy challenges and the methods of engaging and building ownership.
The event concluded with a fruitful engagement of all the participants. In the closing remarks, the senior experts from the Ministry of Education, researchers from Wolaita Sodo University, and the South Ethiopia education bureau head confirmed that they will support the project realization and play their role in the scaling-up process.
