Endline evaluation of Girls’ Access to Education (GATE GEC)

The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) carried out the endline evaluation of the Girls’ Access to Education (GATE) project for Plan International, part of the Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC). IfD was its partner in Sierra Leone, collecting data from vulnerable learners, including girls and children with disabilities, and from teachers and other school stakeholders.

The pandemic stopped NFER staff from travelling, which made IfD’s role as the local partner larger. The two teams worked through regular remote meetings. Field researcher training, normally given in person, was delivered online in short sessions over several days, with materials NFER prepared using IfD’s feedback and IfD sent to the researchers before each session, and a follow-up session a week later. With the safeguarding specialist Dr Bintu Mansaray, the teams adapted safeguarding procedures to Sierra Leone and to work with vulnerable children, and planned around the COVID-19 safety rules of the time.

IfD’s field researchers came from different regions of the country, and that local knowledge kept the fieldwork going:

• The weather. Unusually heavy rain for the season made roads harder than expected. Community members gave the team shelter and directions, and showed them where the phone signal was strong enough to report back.
• The school day. At one school, an unplanned event meant learners were interviewed over their lunch break and could not go home to eat. The team paid for meals at the school, from the discretionary budget IfD field teams carry for situations like this.
• Language. In one area a researcher met a Mende dialect different from their own, and a colleague stepped in so that every answer was fully understood.

The lessons, written up with NFER: careful preparation builds the trust that carries a team through what cannot be planned for, and reflecting at each stage of the research improves the next.