Process Considerations in Evaluating Educational Cooperation Projects

This paper reviews how process considerations have been treated in evaluation of educational cooperation projects. Although for a long time educational assistance has not been put to a close evaluation scrutiny owing to its ‘essentiality' and inherent complexities, the spread of the Results-Based Management in donor countries is changing this, demanding donor agencies to account more strictly for education outcome and delivery, as in any other sectors. At the same time a growing force of local ownership discourse and spreading practice of sector-wide approaches is shedding increasing light on the importance of building technical and institutional capacities so that sustainability of the project's impact is assured beyond the termination of the project. This new concern has generated an impetus for participatory and interactive forms of evaluation. As a promising example pointing to this trend, the paper introduces a mathematics and science education project of a South African provincial department of education, supported by the Japan International Cooperation Agency and a local university, in which formative monitoring has been employed as a tool of project management.