Monitoring and Evaluation Partnership (MEP) Program

In the Kingdom of Jordan, the greater part of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) for education was carried out externally through a quasigovernmental agency, the National Center of Human Resource Development (NCHRD). NCHRD is mandated to conduct evaluation studies for supporting the Jordanian Ministry of Education (MoE) and its educational programs and projects. Despite a well-structured M&E capacity to carry out this mandate, opportunity existed to further enhance the M&E skills of NCHRD staff. Moreover, there was a considerable lack of coordination between NCHRD research and MoE policy.

Within this context, World Education, Inc. (WEI) was awarded USAID funding to implement the four-year Monitoring and Evaluation Partnership (MEP) project to improve the quality of education in Jordan by strengthening the external M&E capacity of NCHRD to support increasing demands for program quality and impact studies related to the Education Reform for Knowledge Economy (ERfKE II), and to train NCHRD staff to master higher-order evaluation skills and techniques for policy relevant evaluation and analysis in the education sector.

World Education understands that M&E capacity building is critical in facilitating an institutional culture where both M&E and data-based decision-making are prioritized. World Education's proven systematic approach to developing such institutional culture within public and private entities, including ministries of education, involves engaging institutions in a self-reflective theory of change process. Building on this methodology, the MEP project worked with NCHRD staff to establish sustainable and systemic mechanisms and processes to communicate research findings and recommendations to the Jordanian Ministry of Education (MoE) and support institutional decision-making and policy development efforts.

The following three objectives guided MEP project implementation:

• Increase the technical capacity and skills of NCHRD staff to carry out quality M&E studies and effectively communicate and disseminate the findings to all major educational stakeholders;
• Work closely with NCHRD to design and carry studies in support of ERfKE II program implementation and the education system in Jordan in general; and
• Build a sustainable, institutional coordination mechanism between the MoE and NCHRD to build mutual trust and collaboration to improve overall M&E capability and impacts of educational investment programs.

World Education worked with The Evaluator's Institute (TEI) at George Washington University (GWU) to provide training and technical assistance to NCHRD through the TEI Certificate program. The two partners worked together, and in collaboration with other USAID-funded programs in Jordan, to provide further training and technical assistance in M&E to both NCHRD and selected MoE staff in support of ERfKE II.