Policy Brief 2015-12-12
Abstract
Executive summary
Background
This report presents the details of the first operational research study in Workstream 2
(OR2) of the Education Data, Research and Evaluation in Nigeria (EDOREN) programme. The
report focuses directly on the Female Teacher Trainee Scholarship Scheme (FTTSS). This
initiative is a core component of the Girls’ Education Project, Phase 3 (GEP3), which is
funded by the UK government’s Department for International Development (DFID).
Operational research brings together concerns about theoretical, conceptual and practical
issues related to the processes and outcomes of a given programme and/or its constituent
strategies. It may be described as a research effort that captures and explores how different
stakeholders are involved in an intervention programme, what their experiences and views
of the programme are, and how or whether the programme (or component) might be
developed to best achieve its objectives (outputs, impacts and outcomes ). In this sense
operational research may be both formative and summative, but most importantly it
provides the basis for all stakeholders, from funders to implementing agencies, educational
administration bodies, educational institutions, individual staff, awardees, communities and
researchers, to learn. The cross-sectional data collection and analysis presented in this
report touch on the multiple layers of the FTTSS, so as to consider the complexities of the
scheme’s structure, relationships and outcomes.
The research
The operational research into the FTTSS was specifically carried out as a collaborative
engagement with UNICEF. Research capacity-development was also built into the research,
so that data collection and analysis have been achieved through a team approach led by the
Centre for International Education (CIE) at the University of Sussex, in collaboration with the
EDOREN team, UNICEF, and a small team of early career Nigerian researchers.
The main intended impact of GEP3 is described in the logframe as supporting the
achievement of an improved social and educational position for girls and women in Bauchi,
Katsina, Niger and Sokoto and Zamfara States. Within this overall objective, the FTTSS was
devised to achieve ‘increased and more effective participation of women in providing
education’ (GEP3, Output 4), as well as – more indirectly and in the longer term – to increase
the proportion of girls enrolling in rural primary schools. More specifically, the FTTSS aims to
increase the number of female teachers in rural areas by awarding scholarships to selected
women from villages to train for the National Certificate in Education (NCE) at a state college
of education (CoE), on the condition that they accept a bond to teach in a rural school for a
minimum of two years upon completion of their training.