Guidance For USAID Education Sector Implementing Partners: Monitoring, Evaluation, And Learning During The COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to have adverse impacts across multiple sectors over the next 12 to 18 months and may result in longer-term impacts beyond this timeframe. To date, the education sector has experienced wide-spread closure of education facilities as an immediate response to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Activity-level monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) plans may need to be adapted so that monitoring, evaluating, and learning is still safe, feasible, and valuable during and after the pandemic.

This guidance outlines six key principles that all USAID-funded efforts to monitor, evaluate, or learn in the education sector should follow during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as eight recommendations for altering or adapting specific components of activity MEL plans. Recommendations will need to be adapted to context and should complement the principles and guidance outlined in the USAID Education Policy. This guidance is limited to recommendations for activity-level MEL efforts and does not address implications of the pandemic for activity design and implementation. This guidance will be updated as needed.