EQUIP2 Final Report.pdf - Education Policy Data Center

Second, EQUIP2’s complementary education findings can inform the early
grade reading strategy, which showed that many non-governmental education
programs were successful because they supported teachers, engaged parents,
and communities in efforts to improve reading. USAID can learn from
the experiences of such programs by supporting local school management,
ensuring that teachers receive the support that they need and making sure
that parents know what to do with reading data.
39
Conclusions
Third, the work on education systems reform will be critical if USAID is
serious about achieving scale and sustainability on all three components of its
strategy. At its core, EQUIP2’s systems approach demonstrates that USAID
should engage in policy dialogue to foster more sustainable projects and
reform. Four key issues raised by EQUIP2’s systems approach lie at the core
of the 2011 strategy’s new approaches and modalities: ownership, impact,
sustainability, and scaling up.
Finally, the secondary education research will be important to the new
strategy in several ways. First, the second component of the USAID strategy
focuses on tertiary and workforce development programs, which are closely
linked with secondary education access, relevance, and outcomes. Second,
early grade readers will be moving through the system, and it will soon
become apparent with these students that there are challenges related to
access and learning at the secondary level that governments will be compelled
to address.
Overall, the EQUIP2 Leader award produced a great deal of rigorous research
that influenced a whole generation of USAID education officers. By using
a systems framework, EQUIP2’s research demonstrated that what happens
at the classroom level is connected to the larger political and institutional
environment of the country. By examining the successes of complementary
education programs, EQUIP2 shed light on the importance of community
participation in schools. By going “back to basics,” the Opportunity to
Learn (OTL) research revealed the huge inefficiencies of government schools
and created an opening for improving school effectiveness and learning
outcomes. As a USAID representative commented, “All of EQUIP2’s research
contributed to advancing thoughts and best practices in those areas; EQUIP2
was a hugely significant wellspring of innovative thought and application.”