Institutional Strengthening of the NEF
As part of its overall country strategy for the Education Sector in Pakistan, the Department for International Development-UK has supported the Education Foundations since the early 1990s. Between 1996 and 2001 it extended its support to SEF and Frontier Education Foundation. DFID has now extended technical support to the National Education Foundation (NEF). The Project is being managed by the British Council. The British Council has helped establish a strong public private partnership framework for NEF’s institutional strengthening by bringing together diverse agencies from both the public and private sector.
Institutional Strengthening and Capacity Building
Sindh Education Foundation focused on capacity building of NEF by:
- Building NEF capacity to identify institutional strengths and weaknesses and developing strategies to build strength and address weaknesses.
- Conducting team building workshop with the staff of NEF after its restructuring. An exhaustive session was carried out with the team individually as well as collectively with focus on team building, organizational cultures and leadership styles.
- Building NEF capacity to plan its program of activities and forecast financial requirements. Extensive sessions with the teams individually as well as collectively were carried out. These sessions were designed to help NEF staff to effectively plan and implement their program activities such as Project Planning and Budgeting.
- Supporting NEF to develop a staffing structure that enables it to successfully fulfill its mission and that is also sustainable and realistic within existing and projected financial constraints.
- Supporting NEF in developing personnel systems (induction, job planning, performance evaluation, and training) that strengthen its performance as an organization and that fit its organizational values.
- Supporting NEF in developing a communications strategy. An elaborate communications strategy has been developed for NEF which was further enriched and strengthened during the Business Planning Consultancy.
- Assisting NEF in developing public private partnerships. Comprehensive participatory sessions on Social Marketing were carried out and on how to design effective social marketing campaigns for NEF’s key programs. A one-day workshop on the basics of Proposal Writing, with emphasis on resource mobilization for NEF’s existing programs as well as their future initiatives.
Planning Monitoring and Evaluation
Capacity Building of NEF to set relevant performance indicators and monitor progress, Sindh Education Foundation conducted several capacity building sessions which focused on:
- Building NEF capacity to develop and use of performance indicators for its overall mission and for individual programs that support the achievement of that mission.
- Supporting NEF to develop sustainable monitoring and evaluation systems for its programs by identifying the monitoring and evaluation needs.
- Supporting NEF in developing both strategy and systems for dissemination of good practices and lessons learned from existing programs. SEF team developed the following communication tools for NEF:
- NEF's Newsletter was also compiled, designed and printed by SEF and is used as an effective tool for dissemination of program lessons/case studies, statistics.
- A brochure was designed and developed for NEF to be used as a public relations and awareness raising tool for all stakeholders.
- NEF's logo was developed for carving out organizational identity.
- NEF's website was developed, designed and uploaded for communicating the achievements and initiatives of NEF to a global audience.
- A strategy was also developed for the dissemination of M&E results for wider sharing and learning.
Management Information System
To develop a Computer-Based Management Information System, SEF focused on:
- Undertaking needs analysis of NEF in relation to MIS. Extensive interviews were conducted with the field staff regarding data collection tools and the mechanisms of data collection. Existing M&E framework and practices were closely examined.
- Designing a format for data collection which will provide data on the following areas:
o Basic information on schools (name, location etc).
o Inventory (furniture, equipment and books).
o Finances (disbursement to schools and expenditure).
o Human resources (teachers qualifications, salary levels).
o Enrolment (student and teacher attendance).
- Designing an IT based management information system which would incorporate the needs of NEF, suitable for local area networking.
- Designing reporting formats to aid NEF's reporting requirements. Databases were designed according to NEF's data collection requirements which are equipped to generate user defined reports.
- Training of NEF personnel on data input so that all paper records can be transferred to the IT based system.
- Training NEF personnel on the retrieval of data and reports. The NEF staff who will be responsible for data entry were trained to enter data into the database and generate reports.
