Blogs

By Lesedi Senamele Matlala_JET Education Services

Use of Online Focus Groups Discussions (FGD) has expanded over the past months, as well as in the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) field since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although guidelines on how to successfully conduct online focus groups might have been issued and published elsewhere, this blog focuses on my experiences and reflections in conducting online FGD during the times of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa.

By Benita Williams

Schools are back, and slowly the support projects implemented by NGOs and other partners are getting back on track. Except, everything is different. Now, evaluators need to take into account a range of COVID-19 related contextual variables when evaluating initiatives in schools. Come and join the EduCOVID TIG Evaluation Hackathon, where we will develop joint indicators and tools to answer common evaluation questions.

By Daleen Botha & Takalani Muloiwa

The third EduCOVID TIG meeting, held on 22 of July 2020, was hosted by Benita Williams (Benita Williams Evaluations) and Takalani Muloiwa (Wits University) on the topic ‘Education, inequality and innovation in the time of COVID-19’.

By Benita Williams

Have you read the newspaper reports about the release of the NIDS-CRAM Wave 1 research? The National Income Dynamics Study – Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM) is a broadly nationally-representative panel survey of 7,000 South African individuals conducted every month.

By Tikwiza Silubonde, Benita Williams

In the second EduCOVID TIG meeting, held on 2 July, Ms. Tikwiza Silubonde from Stellenbosch University facilitated a TIG webinar on "Learning Briefs as a tool to support EduCOVID response". The recording of the meeting together with the presentations can be found here.

By Dr Lorraine Marneweck,Ms Gina Ermacora

This Blog was written Dr Lorraine Marneweck, Programme Director and Ms Gina Ermacora, Virtual Coach from ClassAct in June 2020. It is relevant to the EduCOVID TIG as much of our work is becoming virtual.

By Melissa King (BRIDGE) and Benita Williams

BRIDGE Innovation in Education Organization convened an M&E Community of Practice meeting, with its partners SAMEA, Khulisa and Tshikululu. The topic of the meeting was “The impact of Covid-19 on M&E in Education”

By Dr Mark Abrahams

We all value or prefer certainty over uncertainty and unpredictability. Certainty provides a sense of security, a modicum of control and some level of satisfaction when things unfold as we expect them to. That is partly why we appreciate the graphs and the tables - even if these graphs and tables only deal with speculations and predictions based on patterns, the numbers reflect some level of knowing, of certainty and of control.

By Benita Williams, James Keevy

Coordinating the efforts of the agencies that are working on the Education Sector Response to COVID-19 is important. Read here about the EDVISION initiative of NASCEE. The Edvision Initiative EDVISION is a digital platform, developed by Rand Merchant Bank (RMB), that aims to display the education landscape, facilitate connections, and promote transparency and collaboration. NASCEE has been working with RMB over the last 18 months in establishing this online landscaping and collaboration platform for the education community, namely Edvision, which was due for launch in mid-2020.

By Benita Williams

You do not need to be a SAMEA member to participate. You can be an evaluator, an evaluation user, or a general evaluation hanger-on-er. The group will discuss issues that relate to M&E in the Education Sector, and specifically M&E in support of Education Sector COVID response in South Africa. If you think you will find this interesting, please join.