BACK
Contact details
Submitted by:
U.S. Agency for International Development (donor)
Email:
Nina Papadopoulos, Team Lead Education in Crisis and Conflict, USAID - [email protected]
Website: eccnetwork.net/
Introduction to the project
Country
Global, Bangladesh
Duration
2018
Results are being implemented after RERA is completed.
Description
A RERA is a situation analysis that examines the education sector, learners, and their communities as a dynamic system of multiple contextual risks and assets.
Project aims
The RERA Toolkit allows partners to identify specific recommendations based on data collected that documents a country’s most pressing needs/risks and existing elements of resilience. The enables partners to provide programming and activities that are most effective, lessening the burden on host countries to “do it all.” (GCR Objective 1)
Access to quality education is a vital component of individuals’ self-resilience. Because RERAs often include interviews with refugees, aid workers, and other individuals directly involved in a crisis context, recommendations can be made that are directly related to the issues identified by refugees. These changes can improve education access and equity, and in turn, lead to improvements in refugee self-reliance. (GCR Objective 2)
Main activities of the Good Practice
The RERA is designed to capture information about how education systems, learners, and their communities interact with a dynamic, multiple-risk environment, and how those risks in turn affect project activities and outcomes. In Bangladesh, the RERA was commissioned to understand the impact of the Rohingya influx on pre-primary through secondary education in Bangladeshi schools in Cox's Bazar.
Partners
- USAID/Bangladesh and USAID/Washington
- Bangladesh Ministry of Primary and Mass Education
- Selected school communities in Cox's Bazar district
Challenges and how they were overcome
Challenges: Because the RERA is a "good enough" analysis to ensure timeliness, deliberate trade-offs are sometimes made during the design process, including purposeful, not representative, sampling, and a limited data collection period. For the Bangladesh RERA, the use of local translation during and after primary data collection may have impacted the depth and quality of the data.
How challenges were overcome: The RERA Toolkit is designed to collect information from many sources to ensure the accuracy of findings. In Cox’s Bazar, primary data collection was conducted in local languages, recorded in Bangla, and translated into English.
Results of the Good Practice
For the Bangladesh RERA, numerous recommendations were made based on data analysis:
- Target programming to improve access to and quality of education, especially for girls, the poor, children with disabilities, and other marginalized groups.
- Support school feeding programs to counteract increased food insecurity.
- Expand cash stipend programs for economically vulnerable students
- Work with out-of-school and at-risk populations to prevent dropout and provide alternate pathways to certified learning.
- Development and humanitarian partners should carry out conflict sensitivity self-assessments and impact assessments.
Next steps
A RERA can be implemented throughout a program or activity cycle, countries that have conducted RERAs can do so again to assess the impact of new programs, plan for upcoming change, or respond to a new conflict. USAID will continue to encourage other partners to implement RERAs as needed.
