Context
Lebanon has been facing manifold crises for several years, which have left a significant impact on vital sectors in the country. With the country slipping deeper into an economic and financial crisis, the education sector and the Ministry Education and Higher Education (MEHE) are in high need of support to ensure their ability to sustain their operations and remain able to deliver high quality education to all children residing in Lebanon.
While the complexity of the situation is increasing, with high number of dropouts and out-of-school children, a significant number of students migrating from private to the public school because they cannot afford the high fees anymore, low teachers’ motivation, challenges on the level of transportation and unavailability of basic needs at schools such as power, in addition to a considerable decline in the quality of education, support is needed to ensure that MEHE, including the Center for Educational Research and Development (CERD) and all other departments, guarantees learning continuity under a multiple crisis context through a more resilient education system, that is able to provide quality, inclusive and safe education for all children.
To answer to the increasing needs, the Ministry released its first comprehensive strategy for the general education sector "5-Year Education Sector Plan: Building Lebanon’s Human Capital through Resilient High Quality Public Education" in 2021. However, due to lack of technical capacity at various levels, the Ministry is still unable to fully operationalise the plan with concrete activities spread throughout its internal agencies and with CERD. While a large donor working group is supporting MEHE through collaborative implementation of various programmes, greater degrees of coordination are required to eliminate duplication and ensure no areas are left unserved.
Objective
The overall objective to which this action contributes:
To build an education system (Ministry for Education and Higher Education) better equipped and ble to deliver quality basic education.
Outcome 1: enhance the governance capacities of the MEHE in the field of strategic and operational planning, monitoring, and reporting, budgeting and public finance management.
Outcome 2: enhance the capacities of the MEHE for the delivery of quality teaching and learning by management and educational staff empowered with 21st century skills development.
Outcome 3: enhance the performance of the public education system (MEHE) through improved management and business operating procedures.
Approach
The project is running for 40 months. Team members are based in the ministry of education to be closer to its staff and better able to provide ad-hoc support when needed. Quick interventions are always expected in such a volatile context and the ministry will only develop a certain level of ownership if key staff members feel that this Technical Assistance is always there to provide the needed support.
Human interaction and building trust are the main entry point to be able to implement activities in such a complicated political context. Daily follow-ups have to take place with the General Director.
The project covers 3 different tracks to work with MEHE including:
- Strategic and operational planning (including public finance management)
- Quality Education
- Business operating procedures at a central level, at Regional Educational Offices level and at School level