Supporting improved education access for all children in Lebanon

This project worked to provide world class technical assistance to RACE II programme in Lebanon by supporting public sector education service delivery and the strengthening of the formal education system. 

Project team members

Overview

The Government of Lebanon’s Reaching All Children with Education programme is focused on equitable access, enhance quality and strengthened education systems.

The overall vision of TA to S2R2 was to ensure that all children are enrolled in school, stay longer, learn more, and are supported by a stronger public service delivery systems. It offered funds, embedded long-term and short-term experts as needed, to provide assistance and advice on planning, processes, and financial management (policy and processes) to improve the Lebanese education system. This in turn will achieve increased access and better-quality education for all children in public schools. As a wide-ranging programme, the objectives of the TA also combine aspects of system strengthening that have been identified by MEHE.

The Challenge

The project operated in Lebanon during very critical times, where Lebanon was responding to five major shocks. Starting with the Syrian crisis which brought over 1.2 million Syrians into the country, followed with the economic collapse and various political instability incidents in 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic and finally the Port of Beirut explosion on August 4th, 2020 which was devastating and affected more than 90 schools in the area.

All of these shocks have had a significant impact on the socio-economic situation and the level of poverty in the country which led to a transfer movement from private to public schools, therefore exerting further pressure on the Public Education System to respond to all of these crisis and continue to face existing challenges related to access, equality, enrolment, quality of teaching, and more.

Our Approach

The project's approach to achieving the intended deliverables was through focusing on the following key areas:

  • supporting MEHE to incrementally adopt evidence-based, comprehensive, and integrated sector-wide planning and budgeting
  • supporting the strengthening of management systems in MEHE, including better monitoring of performance, financial management, and management of procurement
  • supporting the building of individual and team capacities at the director level and within directorates
  • supporting the design and implementation of practical interventions to improve the quality of teaching and learning in Lebanese schools, derived from national and international research and evidence
  • supporting the directors and their staff in identifying opportunities to streamline processes and help them to achieve greater efficiency, in particular making better use of modern information and communication technologies.

Outcomes and wider impacts

The outcomes are as follows:

  • Improved effectiveness of MEHE and its agencies in delivering RACE II
  • Academic and pedagogical support to teachers is improved
  • Comprehensive Framework for Data and Information Management is developed and endorsed by MEHE

Image credit: DFID on Flickr

Areas of expertise