Sierra Leone: Call-out for External Baseline Evaluators of GATE-GEC project under DfID’s Girls' Education Challenge-Transition fund (GEC-T) in Sierra Leone

Background

GEC programme background

• The Department for International Development (DFID) leads the UK’s work to end extreme poverty. DFID is tackling the global challenges of our time including poverty and disease, mass migration, insecurity and conflict. DFID’s work is building a safer, healthier, more prosperous world for people in developing countries and in the UK too.
• DFID is working to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. Progress on girls’ education is critical to the achievement of these targets. SDGs 4 and 5 specifically relate to education and achieving gender parity. SDG 4 specifically notes ‘*inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning*’.
• Globally 31 million primary age girls have never been to school. And the majority of these girls come from the poorest and most marginalised communities in the most disadvantaged locations, ethnic groups etc. Over the last 20 years primary enrolments for girls have improved along with boys but completion rates are equally low for both sexes. At the secondary level the differences between boys and girls participation rates really start to show. Significant disparities exist within countries, with the poorest girls from rural areas most severely subject to educational disadvantage - even at the primary level.
• The Girls' Education Challenge (GEC) is helping the world’s poorest girls improve their lives through education and supporting better ways of getting girls in school and ensuring they receive a quality of education to transform their future.
• PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) and alliance partners have been contracted as the dedicated Fund Manager (FM) and is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the GEC. This includes establishing the recipient tendering process, supporting The Evaluation Team, sifting and scoring proposals, monitoring Value for Money (VfM) and making project funding recommendations for DFID approval. The FM also manages the relationships with the selected projects and oversees their Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning operations.
• Through the GEC, DFID provided £355m between 2012 and 2017 to the FM to disburse to 37 individual projects across 18 countries across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia to help girls’ education. In 2016 the GEC Transition window has been set up with additional DFID funding to support the original GEC beneficiaries to continue their journey through stages of education and further improve their learning.

GATE-GEC project background

Plan International is leading a consortium of four organisations, ActionAid (AA), Handicap International (HI), Open University (UK based) and Forum for African Women Educationists (FAWE) in implementing the GATE-GEC project in Sierra Leone, in close collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST).

GATE-GEC’s vision is to continue to support the marginalised girls and children with disabilities in 5 districts in Sierra Leone – Kailahun, Kono, Kenema, Port Loko and Moyamba – that were being supported in our original GEC project since 2013, to reach their learning potential and to transition through primary school, into junior secondary school and beyond. In collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST), GATE-GEC will work at the individual, school, home, community and governance levels to ensure sustainable support and investment in education for Sierra Leone’s most marginalised children. GATE-GEC will build on current GEC interventions that have proven successful in increasing beneficiaries’ access to, transition through and learning at school, including study groups, training and support of female learning assistants and student teachers, working through CBR volunteers and school adaptations to support children with disabilities, and community-based accountability systems. Sustainability will be achieved through adapting and strengthening financial support from bursaries to economic empowerment activities (VSLAs and livelihoods grants) and a structured approach to developing and implementing a partnership strategy to ensure collaboration with and value-add to state and non-state education actors. Deep-rooted social norms will be challenged through providing support to UNICEF’s GATE education media campaign and creating linkages as well as strengthening the existing formal and informal child protection structures including child rights clubs and the existing child forum networks in schools and at district level; a new approach in this transition phase of the GEC.

The project will be focusing on two key transition points: Primary 6 to Junior Secondary School (JSS) for children with disabilities, and Junior Secondary School to Senior Secondary School or other successful transition points that will be identified with beneficiaries during this evaluation process, across 272 primary schools and 180 JSS schools in the 5 districts in Sierra Leone. The project will run for three years plus one tracking year running from May 2017-May 2021.

Rationale for the Evaluation

Plan International UK is seeking to procure the services of an independent Consultant to design, plan and conduct a baseline evaluation for the GATE-GEC project in Sierra Leone, which is funded through the global Girls’ Education Challenge – Transition Window (GEC-T). The Consultant(s) will provide an independent and rigorous evaluation and research function, designing and implementing frameworks which will assess the delivery, effectiveness, VfM, and impact of the project and report the findings and lessons learnt through these processes.[1]

The findings from the evaluations will primarily be used:

· By the project management team, project partners and stakeholders to inform improvements in the delivery of the project during its lifetime;

· to demonstrate accountability for the funding received to DFID, other UK Government Departments, UK tax-payers, UK media;

· by the project management team to leverage additional resources from existing and new partners and stakeholders in order to scale-up and sustain the activities /benefits delivered by the project;

· by the project management team to support the on-going development and implementation of the project’s sustainability and succession strategies;

· by partners, stakeholders and the Government to learn lessons from the project for the purpose of replicating what works elsewhere and/or taking up approaches and activities that have proven to work in order to scale up the project;

· by the Fund Manager to feed into and identify insights in order to inform programme level questions; and

· by other donors, academic institutions and education networks to inform the wider policy debate concerning the education of girls and marginalised girls.

Evaluation Objective

The project is seeking to procure the services of an independent External Evaluator to conduct a mixed-method, gender-sensitive baseline evaluation that is inclusive of persons with disabilities (disaggregated by types and severity) of the GATE-GEC project. The GEC project has extremely high demands in terms of the quantity and quality of evidence to be collected and used by multiple stakeholders, and will require a high level of rigour and investment to meet the M&E standards expected. The research efforts will align as much as possible with Plan’s Programme Accountability and Learning System, including additional research questions relating to child-centeredness, gender and inclusion. The design and implementation of the baseline must also take into account and abide by Plan International’s Child-Centred Community Development principles. This means, for example, ensuring children are at the centre of the research, that principles of gender equality, inclusion (particularly around disabilities) and non-discrimination are considered and acted upon throughout, and that the meaningful participation of children and other key stakeholders is promoted in the design and implementation of the baseline. Furthermore, the assessment is required to be conducted in line with Plan International’s Child Protection Policy and internal guidelines on Child Protection and ethical standards in Monitoring, Evaluation and Research.

Evaluation Questions

The baseline study is intended to provide a clear picture of the issues affecting the current cohort of girls’ and children with disabilities’ (following on from GEC 1) education in the 5 districts and to identify the needs of the GATE-GEC cohort of girls and children with disabilities. This will allow the project to further develop the programmatic design and target interventions of the programme accordingly, based on a solid situational analysis and on baseline data. The baseline study must also provide baseline data for the project logframe and provide the basis, in order to compare the results and assess the extent of change, and answer the follow GEC evaluation questions:

• Was the project successfully designed and implemented according to stakeholders? What are the best practices and successful stories of change?

• To what extent has GATE-GEC reached and affected marginalised girls and children with disabilities (based on type and severity)?

• What impact has the project had on marginalised girls’ and children with disabilities learning? To what extent has the project addressed the needs of marginalised girls and children with disabilities? What has been the involvement of parents, teachers and school administration in the implementation of the project? What was it unable to achieve?

• What works to increase the attendance, quality of learning and transition of marginalised girls throughout school and beyond JSS?

• What impact has GATE-GEC had on enabling marginalised girls and children with disabilities to be in school?

• What impact has GATE-GEC had on indirect beneficiaries including boys within the schools?

• What has worked, what has not worked, why, and with what effects?

• How sustainable are the proposed changes envisaged by the project (baseline) and how sustainable are any changes the project has led to (this will be linked to the midline and endline)? How effective has the sustainability strategy been? What is the long-term impact of the project in the life condition of the beneficiaries?

• To what extent has the project been framed within national educational priorities and policies?

In addition to using GEC questions and OECD-DAC evaluation criteria, the following are cross-cutting questions for Plan’s evaluations:

• Child-centeredness – To what extent were children involved in the project, how were they selected, what was the impact on boys and girls of their participation in the project and how did the project affect girls and boys, directly or indirectly, positively or negatively?

• Non-discrimination and inclusion – Who benefited from the project and who was excluded, and why? How were marginalised/ vulnerable groups included? What was the impact on specific groups of children with disabilities (see Washington Group for the types of disabilities)?

• Gender – To what extent did the project contribute to increased equality between boys and girls, women and men? To what extent was the project gender transformative?

These questions help define the scope and focus of the project evaluation process. The successful bidder will be expected to work with the Project Management Team to review and revise these questions as appropriate at the outset of the project. Project specific context is important in this respect.

Methodology

Overall evaluation approach

The overall evaluation approach requires the Evaluation Team to design, plan and conduct a mixed-methods evaluation that is longitudinal in nature. The evaluation will adopt a quasi-experimental approach, with Treatment and Control groups to allow for difference-in-difference analysis of our results as well as looking at pre and post-test changes in key outcome indicators to assess the impact of the project. Due to the specific context of our current beneficiary group, in particular the number of interventions in support to primary and secondary education, the consortium will work with country partners, our external evaluators, PwC and MEST to establish appropriate control groups. The evaluation will also look to capture those beneficiaries that have transitioned post JSS, into SSS, employment, training or other pathways to capture sustainability of the project interventions and life choices taken post JSS education.

A proportionate amount of time and resources should be allocated to the evaluation given the type of project interventions, operational context and the reporting requirements of the GEC.

Research design

The Evaluation Team will be required to design and implement a participatory, inclusive and gender-sensitive mixed method baseline study as an integrated part of the overall MEL strategy and plan for the project. This may include pre-baseline data collection to identify the target group and barriers to education. The baseline study should identify the number of beneficiaries with disabilities as well as the type and severity of their disability, following the UN Washington Group methodology. The Evaluation Team should set out their approach to the baseline study. See section 5 of the MEL Framework (available on request).

Comparison groups: The Evaluation Team are required to outline their approach to evaluating the impact of the project. This should include consideration of the most rigorous approach to establishing a counterfactual, which should enable comparison of the outcomes achieved by the target group with the outcomes achieved by a group who are similar in every way to the target group, except that they have not in any way been exposed to or affected by the project intervention i.e. a comparison group. This will be particularly important in the case where organizations working in areas beyond the GATE-GEC project are implementing similar activities and we want to ensure that these children are not a part of the control group either. Careful consideration should be given to the use of experimental or quasi-experimental methods for this purpose.

Cohort tracking: The project is required to track a learning cohort and a transition cohort – defined as a group of individuals who progress through life (community or school) together. The Evaluation Team should outline their approach to tracking these cohorts in both the control and intervention areas. Refer to Part 4 of the Fund Manager’s Evaluation Guidance for more information on cohort tracking.

Measuring outcomes: The Evaluation Team are expected to understand the project’s key and intermediate outcomes and suggest the most appropriate data collection approach to evaluate each outcome. This should include a mixture of quantitative and qualitative approaches. Refer to the Fund Manager’s Evaluation Guidance and section 5.2 of the MEL Framework (draft available upon request). The Evaluator will be expected to pilot tools that will be used for data collection and refine as necessary.

Project sampling framework: The Evaluation Team will be required to help finalise the sampling frameworks for both qualitative and quantitative samples. These should be of a sufficient size and representativeness to allow:

• reasonable levels of certainty that the findings are representative for the target population;
• reasonable ability to generalise the intervention’s effectiveness to similar contexts; and
• reasonable ability to generalise the insights into what works and why for similar contexts.

Ethical Protocols

The evaluation approach must consider the safety of participants and especially children at all stages of the evaluation. The evaluation team will need to demonstrate how they have considered the protection of children through the different evaluation stages, including recruitment and training of research staff, data collection and data analysis and report writing.

Research ethics plan: The Evaluation Team are required to set out their approach to ensuring complete compliance with international good practice with regards to research ethics and protocols, particularly with regards to safeguarding children, vulnerable groups (including people with disabilities) and those in fragile and conflict affected states. Consideration should be given to:

• administrative, technical and physical safeguards to protect the confidentiality of those participating in research;
• physical safeguards for those conducting research;
• Child-safe physical safeguards for children participating in research;
• Appropriate time allocated to engage with children participating in the research;
• data protection protocols and secure maintenance procedures for personal information;
• parental consent concerning data collection from children or collation of data about children;
• age- and ability-appropriate assent processes based on reasonable assumptions about comprehension for the ages of children and the disabilities they intend to involve in the research;
• Appropriate spaces and methodologies tailored in consideration of unique needs of children with disabilities;
• Appropriate language and communication for different ages and the disabilities of children involved in the research;
• age-appropriate participation of children, including in the development of data collection tools.

Existing Information Sources

In the first instance, The Evaluation Team should refer to the DFID GEC website: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/girls-education-challenge for general information concerning the Girls’ Education Challenge.

The Evaluation Team, once appointed, should refer to the following GEC programme documentation:

• Grant Recipient Handbook
• Evaluation Guidance
• Logframe and workplan guidance

The Evaluation Team should refer to the following GEC project documentation that includes:

• Project logframe;
• Project Full Application as included in the Accountable Grant Arrangement; and
• Project’s MEL framework (draft framework is available on request).

The Evaluation Team should also refer to relevant country data and information that is currently available, including previous evaluation reports from the GEC 1 project, as required, to prepare the proposal. All documents are available on request.

Deliverables and Schedule

This assignment is expected to commence in late July to commence the desk research/inception report writing phase. Field work should commence following the completion of the verification exercise (or possibly in parallel) in and around the last week of September/first week of October, and the final report will be due in December 2017. All applicants should ensure they are available for the full duration of this period. The final submission date is non-negotiable. Specific dates will be agreed with the evaluators once recruited.

Project deliverables: the main deliverables for this project are as follows:

• Inception report: setting out the design of the MEL strategy and plan and associated planning, logistics, quality assurance, child protection measures and risk management information including gender analysis.
• Baseline study report (including drafts): design, conduct and submit a baseline study that describes the initial conditions (before the start of the project) against which progress can be measured or comparisons made to show the effects and impacts of the project in the final project evaluation report. A final report structure will be provided by the FM.
• Face-to-face presentations in-country of all deliverables as an integral part of the submission process.

Report requirements: all reports should be submitted in electronic form and should be submitted in English. The Evaluation Team will be expected to provide a fully ‘cleaned-up’ dataset in SPSS, Stata or SAS file format accompanied by the code used to carry out analysis and a variable codebook.

Detailed work plan: The Evaluation Team are required to provide a detailed work plan incorporating all relevant tasks and milestones from start to finish of the evaluation study.

Project milestones: The Evaluation Team are required to include in their detailed work plans the milestones set out below. Please note final dates will be confirmed once evaluators are recruited and initial discussions are scoped out with the evaluators.

Tendering Process

• Invitation to tender sent out to bidders: 26^th June 2017
• Deadline for receipt of tenders: 12.00 BST, 7^th July 2017
• Evaluation of tenders and shortlisting completed: 11^th July 2017
• Interviews of shortlisted suppliers held: 12^th July 2017 Supplier appointed: 14^th July 2017

Inception Phase

• Inception Meeting held: 17^th July 2017 (TBC)
• Literature/document review & data gathering completed: Bidder to complete
• Review of project’s theory of change, impact logic and evaluability completed: Bidder to complete
• Stakeholder consultation completed: Bidder to complete
• Child protection framework developed: Bidder to complete
• Sampling framework for primary research for baseline completed: Bidder to complete
• Design of data collection strategy including cohort tracking design completed: Bidder to complete
• Design of primary research instruments for baseline completed: Bidder to complete
• Draft Inception Report (including design of baseline study) submitted for review and comments by Project Manager and Project Partners: Bidder to complete
• Presentation to Evaluation Steering Group: Bidder to complete
• Review complete and comments returned to supplier: Bidder to complete
• Final Inception Report submitted: 25^th August 2017

Baseline Study Phase

• Tool development and piloting: Bidder to complete
• Baseline research starts: Late September 2017 (aligned with the beneficiary verification process)
• Baseline research completed: Late October (tbc)
• Draft Baseline Study Report submitted for review: Bidder to complete
• Presentation to Evaluation Steering Group: Bidder to complete
• Review by Project Management and stakeholders completed /comments provided to Supplier: Bidder to complete
• Supplier addresses comments and revises Baseline Study Report: Bidder to complete
• Final Baseline Study Report submitted: End of Dec 2017

A more detailed milestone document in line with the fund manager’s requirements will be agreed with the evaluators once they are recruited.

Responsibilities &Logistical Support

The GATE-GEC Consortium will provide:

· The project proposal, MEL Framework and other relevant documents

· Overview of the programme, list of schools per district; list of beneficiaries per school disaggregated per sex and disabilities; contact list of key people in the field.

· Use of office space for checking emails etc. for the duration of the assignment.

· Support in setting up introductive meetings with relevant stakeholders and communities

· Feedback on the draft tools and reports (inception and final tools/reports).

The Consultant(s) will be responsible for timely delivery of the outputs and deliverables as outlined above and prompt reporting and presentation of raw data, draft and final report. More specifically the Consultant(s) will:

· Recruit and train research assistants to enumerate the assessment

· Make own arrangements to reach the selected schools and/or communities and organize interviews

· Supervise and take full responsibility of the behaviour and performance of data collectors

· Perform child protection background checks

· Ensure the full logistical support for the entire exercise across all districts

· Design tools where necessary

· Run analysis of the findings and produce reports

Required Competences and Experience

The Evaluation Team are required to clearly identify and provide CVs for all those proposed in the Evaluation Consultancy, clearly stating their roles and responsibilities for this evaluation. Please note that if the enumeration is to be sub-contracted, the evaluator will be ultimately responsible for the enumerators they are subcontracting to.

The proposed Consultant(s) should include the technical expertise and practical experience required to deliver the scope of work and evaluation outputs, in particular with regards to:

· Evaluation design: the team should include skills and expertise required to design, plan and conduct mixed-method impact evaluation, potentially using experimental or quasi-experimental techniques; ensuring they understand the policy context around education and disability;

· Skills in quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis, drawing findings from multiple sources and handling potential contradictions between data sets;

· Relevant subject matter knowledge and experience on conducting research using child–centered participatory methodologies with children, particularly children with disabilities (with knowledge of the UN Washington Group model and recognition of the severity and type of disability), gender and child protection to ensure that the evaluation design and research methods are as relevant and meaningful as possible given the aims and objectives of the project and the context in which it is being delivered;

· Evaluation management: manage a large-scale and complex evaluation and research process from end-to-end, including conducting and reporting a baseline study and final project evaluation report;

· Primary research: inclusive and gender-sensitive design, management and implementation of primary quantitative and qualitative research in potentially challenging project environments, such as fragile and conflict affected states – this could include the design of longitudinal household panel surveys, EGRA /EGMA tests, in-depth interviews, focus groups, etc., understanding the policy context around education and disability in particular and the barriers that affect the beneficiaries and communities.

· Country experience: it is particularly important that the team has the appropriate country knowledge /experience and language proficiency required to conduct the research required;

· Information management: design and manage sex- and disability-disaggregated data and information systems capable of handling large datasets for MEL purposes;

· Statistical analysis: a range of statistical modelling and analysis of impact data; highly proficient user of: SPSS or STATA; and qualitative data analysis techniques, including the use of software e.g. ATLAS.ti, NVivo or equivalent where needed;

· VfM assessment of education projects: education economics expertise to conduct cost benefit analysis and cost effectiveness analysis as part of the assessment of the project’s VfM;

· Understanding of Payment by Results and how to effectively draw this into the evaluation design, questions and approach as this will inform payments made to the consortium;

· Safety considerations: Ensuring the whole evaluation process adheres to best practice for research with children, including the implementation of child protection policy and procedures to ensure the safety of participants. Note that The Evaluation Team are expected to be able to show that they have a child protection policy in place to safeguard children that the research team would come into contact with through the research activities.

The Consultant(s) should be a specialist in monitoring and evaluation, especially in the education sector with the following qualifications:

· Degree in social sciences, development studies;

· Excellent analytical and writing skills;

· Excellent teaching and coaching skills;

· Fluency in spoken and written English.

· Excellent facilitation and co-ordination skills

Organisational Experience: The Evaluation Team should provide evidence of previous project experience for the provision of similar evaluation services and the design and implementation of similar evaluation activities required by this ToR.

Conflict of Interest: The Consultant(s) must demonstrate the necessary independence and declare any conflict of interest and potential biases, including bias towards any of the stakeholders, target groups, type of approach etc.

Based on rights and ethics: The Consultant(s) must respect the rights and dignity of participants as well as comply with relevant ethical standards. During field work the Consultant(s) will follow Plan International Sierra Leone’s child protection guidelines. The Consultant(s) will be briefed on these before the assignment.

Logistics and Quality Assurance Procedures

Risk management

Risk management plan: This is an extremely important piece of work for the project and the GEC programme as a whole with potentially challenging requirements. It is important that the successful bidder has taken all reasonable measures to mitigate any potential risk to the delivery of the required outputs for this evaluation. Therefore, The Evaluation Team should submit a comprehensive risk management plan covering:

· The assumptions underpinning the successful completion of the proposals submitted and the anticipated challenges that might be faced;

· Estimates of the level of risk for each risk identified;

· Proposed contingency plans that the bidder will put in place to mitigate against any occurrence of each of the identified risk;

· specific child protection risks and mitigating strategies, including reference to the child protection policy and procedures that will be in place; and

· Health and safety issues that may require significant duty of care precautions.

Data quality assurance

Quality assurance plan: The Evaluation Team are required to submit a quality assurance plan that sets out the systems and processes for quality assuring the evaluation and research process and deliverables from start to finish of the project. This plan should include the proposed approaches to:

· Piloting of all research activities;

· Training of enumerators and researchers conducting the primary research;

· Logistical and management planning;

· Field work protocols and data verification including back-checking and quality control by supervisors; and

· Data cleaning and editing before any analysis.

Budget

The estimated budget for this work is £100,000 inclusive of VAT (at a rate of 20%). Evaluators registered outside of the UK should note that the VAT element will be paid directly by Plan International UK to the UK tax authorities and therefore will not form part of their payment tranches.

This budget should cover the data collection, analysis and reporting for the baseline evaluation. Evaluators should also describe what they can expect to achieve within this envelope and to provide a breakdown of costs and expenses, including number of days and daily fee rate. The budget is inclusive of all costs covering team member costs, travel, research costs and any other costs associated the completion of the work including where required costs for reasonable adjustment. The Evaluation Team are required to organise and fund their own duty of care arrangements as required.

The Evaluation Team are required to provide a fully costed proposal in the form of a price schedule that

as a minimum should include:

· Sub-total of fees for the delivery of any task or deliverable, broken down by the number of days for each individual study team members against the tasks set out in the workplan,

· Total fees per team member.

· Day rates for each study team member, against the total number of days per team member.

· Expenses and overheads broken down by the project cost categories;

· Total costs before and after any taxes that are applicable.

· The Evaluation Team are required to provide a payment schedule on the basis of milestone payments for the successful delivery of each deliverable.

Full Application Requirements

Thank you for submitting an expression of interest for the GATE-GEC baseline consultancy. Plan International UK invites bids from individual consultants or firms with the experience and skills described above submit the following application documents to gecevaluation@plan-uk.org no later than midday on 07/07/2017. Applications submitted after the deadline will not be accepted. Bids should include:

· A technical proposal that includes the sampling strategy, basic methodology which will be used as well as the proposed timeframe with a detailed workplan;

· A financial proposal that covers all consultancy related costs (enumerator team, data collection, data entry, data analysis, administrative costs etc.) in PDF format;

· A CV of each of the evaluation team members detailing relevant skills and experience of no more than 3 pages;

· Two samples of a relevant M&E report from different contractors;

· Two contactable referees

Payment Method

Payment will be made in three (3) tranches:

· First installment of 40% upon submission of final inception report and tools

· Second installment of 30% upon submission of first draft of final report

· Third installment of 30% upon submission and satisfaction of a final report to the satisfaction of Plan International UK, Plan International Sierra Leone and the GEC Fund Manager.

Supervision and management

The Consultant(s) will be directly supervised by the M&E team in Plan International UK (with support from the Senior M&E manager in the Plan Sierra Leone team) who is responsible for the day-to-day project management of the evaluation. The Consultant is required to daily contact and weekly report to the GATE-GEC M&E Manager during the fieldwork stage of the evaluation and weekly contact during design and writing stages.

Ownership and Disclosure of Data/Information

All documents, data and information shall be treated as confidential and shall not, without the written approval of Plan International Sierra Leone be made available to any third party. In addition, the Consultant formally undertakes not to disclose any parts of the confidential information and shall not, without the written approval of Plan International Sierra Leone be made available to any third party. The utilization of the report is solely at the decision and discretion of Plan International Sierra Leone. All documents containing both raw data/materials and final report, both soft and hard copies are to be returned to the GATE-GEC M&E Manager upon completion of the assignment. All documentation and reports written as, and as a result of the research or otherwise related to it, shall remain the property of Plan International Sierra Leone. No part of the report shall be reproduced except with the prior, expressed and specific written permission of Plan International Sierra Leone.

Implications of Non Compliance

The Consultant is expected to comply with the terms of reference for undertaking the learning assessments and she/he will be responsible for her/his team. Once she/he signs this Terms of Reference she/he is liable to comply with the conditions of the terms. In case of any inappropriate behaviour including fraudulent act that puts the reputation of the consortium in disrepute, Plan International reserves the right to take disciplinary action that suits the organization within the ambits of the law.

If the external Consultant fails to complete the work within the agreed period she/he will be requested extra time to complete the exercise as deem necessary by management before her/his final payment. No extra payment will be made for negligence or failure to complete the task on time.

[1] Please see DAC ‘Criteria for Evaluating Development Assistance’ (http://www.oecd.org/dac/evaluation/daccriteriaforevaluatingdevelopmentassistance.htm ) for further guidance.

Plan International UK invites bids from individual consultants or firms with the experience and skills described in the ToR to submit the following application documents to gecevaluation@plan-uk.org no later than 12.00 (BST) London on Friday 7^thJuly 2017. Applications submitted after the deadline will not be accepted. Bids should include:

· A technical proposal that includes the sampling strategy, basic methodology which will be used as well as the proposed timeframe with a detailed workplan;

· A financial proposal that covers all consultancy related costs (enumerator team, data collection, data entry, data analysis, administrative costs etc.) in PDF format;

· A CV of each of the evaluation team members detailing relevant skills and experience of no more than 3 pages and

· Two samples of a relevant M&E report from different contractors.

· Two Contactable referees

If you wish to see a copy of the draft MEL framework, or have questions, please contact us at gecevaluation@plan-uk.org.