Project Description

The goal of the qualitative study on the scholarship program for Cambodia’s ethnic minority students in Grades 11 and 12 was to foster learning for the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports and UNICEF to ensure that the program is effective for the government and beneficial for the recipients. Specifically, the aim was to provide impartial and independent comment on the following four issues:

• Effectiveness of the scholarship programme in terms of: (i) transparent and equitable selection of most disadvantaged groups to the programme; (ii) the identification and promotion of gender parity in selection; (iii) delivery mechanisms that ensure timely payment of scholarships; and (iv) utilization of the scholarships to improve outcomes on enrolment, attendance and performance
• Effectiveness of the scholarship programme in inspiring students to pursue careers in MLE (multi-lingual education) teaching, and to understand any barriers to achieving that goal
• Complementarity or overlap with other scholarship programmes, details of other scholarship programmes, such as selection criteria, delivery mechanisms and utilization, and possibilities for harmonization with the current UNICEF-supported scholarships

Assignment

Monica Biradavolu was hired as an independent evaluator to assess the scholarship programme and provide lessons and learnings for UNICEF Cambodia and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports in Cambodia.

• Designed the study including refining the research questions, site selection, sampling and recruitment framework, methodology, data management and data analysis plans
• Developed focus group guides and semi-structured interview guides
• Developed study protocols
• Trained Cambodian translator
• Conducted the focus group discussions and interviews (with the help of the translator) in three northeastern provinces of Cambodia
• Analyzed data
• Produced reports
• Presented findings to key stakeholders in UNICEF and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports