Sector Results and Learning:
Education

This Education Sector Results and Learning page is a repository of evidence generated by all MCC-funded education interventions. To promote learning and inform future program design, this page captures monitoring data from key common indicators, showcases recent and relevant evaluations, includes all agency lessons from completed education evaluations to-date, and links to learning that has been aggregated across completed evaluations in the sector.

What Do We Invest In?

MCC has funded $768 million in education interventions as of March 2023. These interventions target the following levels of education: general education specific; technical and vocational education training/workforce development; and higher education; and fall into the following categories of investment: teacher/school administrator training; infrastructure and equipment; governance and management; and workforce training.

General Education Specific

Education that is designed to develop learners’ general knowledge, skills and competencies and literacy and numeracy skills, often to prepare students for more advanced educational programs and to lay the foundation for lifelong learning.

Technical and Vocational Education Training/Workforce Development

Education and training which provides knowledge and skills for employment. TVET uses formal, non-formal, or informal learning to provide practical and occupational skills at the secondary and post-secondary level, often as an alternative to university training.

Higher Education

Post-Secondary education leading toward an academic degree.

Teachers/School Administrator Training

Interventions that involve professional preparation for teachers (pedagogical and subject matter training), as well as training for school management and teacher mentors.

Infrastructure and Equipment

Includes new construction or rehabilitation of school facilities as well as the supplying of equipment for labs, gymnasiums, and other instructional facilities.

Governance and Management

Interventions related to accountability measures and incentives, including data management and assessments, education policy, and alignment of measures to more coherence in the system.

Workforce Training

Workplace based training, job placement programs, occupational training.

What Have We Completed So Far?

MCC and its country partners develop and tailor Monitoring and Evaluation Plans for each particular program and country context. Within these country-specific plans, MCC uses common indicators where appropriate to standardize measurement and reporting within certain sectors. See below for a subset of common indicators that summarize implementation achievements across all MCC Education investments as of March 2023. Note that these indicators are tracked and reported during program implementation, so do not reflect the continued attendance and graduation of students after MCC-funded programs end. However, such post-program results are included in our independent evaluation reports.

873

educational facilities constructed or rehabilitated

10,621

instructors trained

394,840

students participating in MCC-supported education activities

62,938

graduates from MCC-supported education activities

What Have We Achieved?

MCC commissions independent evaluations, conducted by third-party evaluators, for every project it funds. These evaluations hold MCC and country partners accountable for the achievement of intended results and also produce evidence and learning to inform future program decision-making. They investigate the quality of project implementation, the achievement of the project and other targeted outcomes, and the cost-effectiveness of the project. The graphs below summarize the composition and status of MCC’s independent evaluations in the Education sector as of February 2023. Read on to see highlights of newly published interim and final evaluations. Follow the evaluation links to see the status of all planned, ongoing, and completed evaluations in the sector and to access the reports, summaries, surveys, and data sets.

Go to our List of Evaluations to see the status of MCC’s education sector evaluations

Highlighted Evaluations

A yellow concrete school building with a red shingled roof amidst a background of storm clouds

October 1, 2022 | Guatemala Threshold Program

Strengthening the Education System in Guatemala

Ministry support for teacher selection and recruitment reform facilitated change 

  • Evaluation Type:
  • Evaluation Status: Interim

MCC’s $28 million Guatemala Threshold Program (2016-2021) aimed to provide quality educational opportunities for Guatemala’s youth that have relevance to the labor market, and mobilize additional government resources that are needed to address binding constraints to economic growth. The Education Project consisted of three activities: (1) Quality of Education in Support of Student Success; (2) Improving Technical and Vocational Education and Training; and (3) Strengthening of Institutional and Planning Capacity. This interim evaluation brief focuses on Activity 3.

Read Evaluation Details or the Evaluation Brief

December 15, 2020 | Georgia Compact II

Upgrading STEM Education at Universities in Georgia

Partners collaborated to offer American degrees and prepare for accreditation

  • Evaluation Type:
  • Evaluation Status: Interim

MCC’s Georgia II Compact (2013–2019), which disbursed $136 million, funded the $30 million STEM Higher Education Project, which aimed to improve science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) university education to give graduates better employment opportunities with higher incomes, leading to an increase in economic growth. Three public Georgian universities and one university from the United States worked to give Georgian students an opportunity to earn a high-quality STEM bachelor’s degree, improve the Georgian partners’ STEM-related infrastructure, and prepare the partners for international program accreditation.

Read Evaluation Details or the Evaluation Brief

Exterior of the Oshana regional library

August 11, 2020 | Namibia Compact

Namibian Communities Value Library Resources

Libraries supported learning and professional goals despite sustainability challenges

  • Evaluation Type:
  • Evaluation Status: Final

MCC’s $304.5 million Namibia Compact (2009–2014) funded the $145 million Education Project, including the $20.8 million Regional Study and Resource Center (RSRC) Activity. The RSRC Activity built three regional libraries and provided technical assistance and training based on the theory that expanded community access to information, training resources, and study facilities would improve educational and professional outcomes.

Read Evaluation Details or the Evaluation Brief

Fouiza Mouamer attends an MCC-funded literacy class in Agadir, Morocco. Under the Compact signed in 2007, functional literacy courses have benefitted thousands of adults across the North African country.

July 29, 2020 | Morocco Compact

Supporting Artisan Skills and Literacy in Morocco

Beneficiaries and employers were satisfied with training quality

  • Evaluation Type:
  • Evaluation Status: Final

MCC’s $650 million Morocco Compact (2008-2013) funded the $32.8 million Functional Literacy and Vocational Training (FLVT) Activity, which aimed to provide literacy and vocational training programs to improve the productivity and employability of trainees. This program was based on the theory that improved skills and professional qualifications would increase the revenues of artisans, fishers, and farmers participating in the program.

Read Evaluation Details or the Evaluation Brief

Go to our Evaluation Brief page to see all completed education sector evaluations

What Have We Learned from Our Results?

To link the evidence produced by the independent evaluations with MCC practice, project staff produce an MCC Learning document at the close of each interim and final evaluation to capture practical lessons for programming and evaluation. Use the filters below to find lessons relevant to your evidence needs.

  • Random assignment can be a fair and transparent mechanism to distribute finite resources and allow for a rigorous impact evaluation.

    Random assignment can be a fair and transparent mechanism to distribute finite resources and allow for a rigorous impact evaluation. In El Salvador, random assignment was seen as a fair way to distribute scholarships when qualified demand exceeded supply. Scholarships were offered for multiple years and the random selection was only conducted in the year where there were more qualified applicants who met the minimum criteria than scholarships available. By randomly selecting scholarship recipients, the applicants who were not offered scholarships were similar to those offered scholarships and thus created a strong control group to measure impact. The random assignment method (a computerized lottery conducted publicly) was transparent and it was clear that each eligible applicant had an equal chance to receive the scholarship.

  • Improvements in enrollment and progression drove improved levels of learning, but without efforts to address weak overall performance of schools, the rate of learning may not improve.

    Improvements in enrollment and progression drove improved levels of learning, but without efforts to address weak overall performance of schools, the rate of learning may not improve. As education access (availability, distance) and girls’ participation were constrained in rural Burkina Faso, the project’s approach of bundled interventions to address these two constraints seem to have driven improvements on these dimensions. Teacher housing and performance awards seems to have helped BRIGHT schools attract more female teachers and allow schools to reduce teacher/student ratio. However, despite improving girls’ engagement and smaller classroom sizes, BRIGHT schools did not seem to have a steeper learning profile than non-BRIGHT schools (i.e. how long it takes a given student to arrive at a skill/competency such as recognizing letters or reading a sentence). In contexts where education quality lags act as a more binding constraint than enrollment, improvements to the academic environment – including quality instruction, better educational management and leadership, and academic support for struggling students – might help steepen learning profiles.

  • New systems or service offerings should include well-designed data systems.

    New systems or service offerings should include well-designed data systems. The evaluation reported inconsistencies in the administrative data collected within and across the RSRCs. For example, the final report describes the visitor counter at the Oshana RSRC, where patrons who use the restroom or retrieve items from a locker must exit and be counted again upon reentry, resulting in systematically overcounting library visits at that location. The weak data systems at the RSRCs limited the evaluation but more importantly, they also undermine performance management efforts taking place at the individual RSRC and central levels. Future investments in entirely new systems or service offerings like the RSRCs should develop systemwide data systems that are both appropriate given the infrastructure itself (e.g., layouts that position visit counters between the restrooms and the rest of the facility are going to skew the visit counts) and facilitate the types of planning and decision-making that needs to happen at various levels within the system. MCC recognizes the importance of data systems to performance management and nearly all of the agency’s ongoing education interventions include investments in data systems.

  • The ILEI evaluation’s use of pairwise randomization implemented by construction phase helped mitigate risks to the evaluation due to uncertainties around the number of treatment schools and construction timelines.

    The ILEI evaluation’s use of pairwise randomization implemented by construction phase helped mitigate risks to the evaluation due to uncertainties around the number of treatment schools and construction timelines. MCC should build flexibility into evaluation design whenever possible.

  • Key policy decisions that affect sustainability should be taken before MCC compacts end.

    Key policy decisions that affect sustainability should be taken before MCC compacts end. To the extent possible, policy and regulatory hurdles should be identified before Entry into Force, with consultant support as needed, to ensure that partner governments can reap the benefits of intensive technical assistance to operationalize new government functions and increase the likelihood of sustainability. Important policy decisions were still to be determined at the end of the Namibia compact. For example, the process Industry Skills Committees would use to identify priority skill areas and what constitutes vocational training were both unclear. This lack of clarity could easily impede the Namibia Training Authority’s ability to identify the skills that are truly in demand and prevent employers from being reimbursed for sponsored trainings. It will be important to resolve these issues soon so that stakeholders maintain support for the system.

How Have We Aggregated Learning Across the Sector?

In January 2023, MCC published Insights from General Education Evaluations, a paper that synthesizes evidence from completed evaluations of general education investments. MCC previously developed a Principles into Practice paper using evidence from other completed independent evaluations in the education sector – Principles into Practice: Training Service Delivery for Jobs and Productivity.

The Principles into Practice series offers a frank look at what it takes to make the principles MCC considers essential for development operational in the projects in which MCC invests. The learning captured in this paper informs MCC’s ongoing efforts to refine and strengthen its own model and development practice in the education sector. MCC hopes this paper will also allow others to benefit from, and build upon, MCC’s lessons.