School for All Project in Madagascar  (September 2015–November 2015)

The Government of Madagascar has been focusing on education reform as part of a country-wide initiative to improve access to basic social services and invest in human capital. Although the government had some successes such as increasing school enrollment rate to 83.3% in 2005, enrollment worsened due to the 2009 political crisis and the country was not on track to meet its Millennium Development Goals on universal primary education. Educated teachers, effective school management and operations, as well as resident participation in monitoring the local education system are important drivers for improving the country’s quality of education.

The School for All Project takes a ground-up approach by empowering residents to tackle systemic challenges to improve children’s education. The role of the team comprised of IC Net and the project’s prime contractor was to lay the groundwork for the project. The team worked with local counterparts to gather data and assess the needs on the ground, evaluated the effectiveness of ongoing government education initiatives, and forged partnerships to facilitate project implementation. Based on the mapping of the ecosystem of the country’s education sector, the team put together a project design and plan of operations.