Mid-Term Review Report for the SEAQE 2 project - Somalia

Several high-level findings have been extrapolated. These are:

• A higher proportion of girls than boys performed well in numeracy, and a higher proportion of boys than girls performed well in literacy
• Teachers suggested training on how to assess gaps in learning, on catch up programs and on how to adapt the curriculum, would have helped them prepare for student return.
• Teachers also felt that e-Learning, while not accessible to all students, did help improve learning.
• Teachers highly value in-service teacher training and pleasingly 68 percent report accessing inservice during COVID-19 as well as mentoring and coaching and distance learning. This is encouraging, as it shows that ADRA Somalia did not lose focus on TPD during school closures and found ways to reach most teachers.
• Efforts to improve the capacity of teachers were undermined by high teacher turnover. This, in part, was due to a lack of govt resources and capacity to pay teachers.
• The decision to stop support for teacher salaries following phase 1 of SEAQE was premature and more advocacy and engagement with MoECHE on teacher salaries remains highly relevant. 44 percent of teachers said they did not receive a salary and did not have the budget to visit student's homes.
• SEAQE’s support to promote children’s safe return to school was relevant but did not extend far enough. MTR respondents reported that the most vulnerable did not return, including children living in poverty, children in rural areas, children whose parents had to migrate for work, girls and children with disabilities.

• Working directly with state and local level education authorities to strengthen their capacity to fulfil their role in supporting and monitoring inclusive education within schools has been a highly effective strategy.

• ADRA Somalia reported that this has contributed to empowering state level authorities, has led to efforts to capture data on children with disabilities in schools and has resulted in government resource allocation for inclusive education training for teachers (this high level of cooperation is also true for South Sudan).

• A more rigorous and continuous process of conflict analysis may have helped reduce tensions and avoid implementation delays. The start-up of SEAQE 2 suffered significant delays because government permissions were not granted until Feb 2020 (7 months after the contract with NORAD was signed). This was because of tensions between federal and state government authorities over target locations / schools and the distribution of project resources.

• ADRA Somalia reported that SEAQE 2 target states were expanded from 3 to 5 to meet federal and state demands for equal resource distribution.

• ADRA Somalia reflected that greater attention to such issues were needed at the outset and may have avoided the complex negotiations and delays that were experienced at the start of the project.

• It is evident that during school closures most students did not receive any support and distance learning was not available to most students.

• Parents would like to have more frequent meetings with teachers, more cultural activities that parents can engage in and more feedback on their children's learning.

• SMC members suggest that more teacher professional development, teaching and learning resources and advocacy on teacher salaries and benefits are priorities for teacher wellbeing in the coming years.

• SMC members shared their interest in more training and support on how to support girls' education, school leadership and governance, management, and financial management.

• Discrimination against children with disabilities remains a persist challenge and children with disabilities were the main group that missed support during and after COVID-19 school closures.