PAQUE: actions to monitor and evaluate the success of the project

As the Education Quality Improvement Project comes to a close in December 2022, the Communication Management Directorate of the Ministry of Primary, Secondary, and Technical Education (DGC/EPST) reviews the project’s achievements in this three-part series.

The first two installments of this series focused on the first two of PAQUE’s three components: improving teaching conditions in primary schools and strengthening sectoral management. This article, for its part, addresses the third component: “project management, monitoring, and evaluation.”

 The objective of this component was to ensure the optimal implementation of the project and to verify the achievement of its results.

These results include, among other things, the reforms contained in the SSEF 2016–2025. Several field studies were conducted to serve as a barometer for the achievement of the project’s objectives. This is the case with the preliminary evaluation study of the PAQUE project.

These studies are often accompanied by both plans to address the challenges hindering improvements in the quality of education and reports documenting them. For example, there was a plan for Indigenous Populations; an operational communication action plan for 2021 and 2022; a progress report on the implementation of PAQUE activities in July 2020; project progress reports from 2020 to 2022; and a monitoring and evaluation plan for the Sectoral Strategy for Education and Training (SSEF-2016-2025).

PAQUE also played a leading role in securing the Ministerial Decree establishing the Institutional Framework of the Complaints Management Mechanism (MGP) and in the signing of the Code of Conduct for Teaching Staff (Code 22) by educators across much of the Congolese national territory.

To ensure a comprehensive evaluation, two joint annual mid-term reviews of the Sectoral Strategy for Education and Training were organized, one from September 30 to October 4, 2019, and the second from October 13 to 17, 2022.

Note that all the departments and agencies involved in the Education Quality Improvement Project that we interviewed expressed satisfaction with its achievements, despite some difficulties raised. Hence their call for the government to step in to ensure the sustainability of these gains.

Bruno NSAKA