British Council – English for Success

British Council - English for Success

Wider Europe

2019 - 2020

Kazakhstan

Countries

Kazakhstan

Lead M&E Consultant(s)

Nicky Hockly, Simon Borg

Project Overview

Funded by the British Council and Tengizchevroil, the ‘English for Success’ programme in Kazakhstan’s Mangystau Province aimed to develop English language and STEM teachers’ pedagogical expertise, so as to develop their students’ skills in English and STEM. TCE’s Director of Pedagogy Nicky Hockly carried out an in-country mid-term evaluation of this programme in 2019; M&E Expert Simon Borg carried out a summative evaluation of the programme in 2020.

Approaches & Outputs

Both evaluations followed a mixed methods approach and required the development and further adaptation of a project log frame, M&E plans, and research instruments; qualitative and quantitative data were collected, and f2f classroom observations of English language and STEM teachers took place in-country, with classroom protocols developed for the project. By triangulating qualitative and quantitative data from a number of sources – classroom observations, surveys, interviews and FGDs with key beneficiaries and stakeholders (including school directors, British Council project managers and trainers, teachers, learners and local ministry of education officials), and in-depth reviews of project documentation including teachers’ learning portfolios – evidence of teacher learning was compiled and analysed. Both evaluations included liaison with stakeholders and in-depth reporting.

Impact On

Kazakhstan Ministry of Education & Science; local education authorities in Mangystau. The 2019 and 2020 evaluations directly impacted 6 English language & STEM trainers; 180 trained English language & STEM teachers; and thousands of primary & secondary school students in Mangystau.

Challenges

For the mid-point evaluation, teachers were chosen for M&E observation by local Ministry officials, not by random sampling; this led to the ‘best’ teachers being evaluated and potentially skewed observation data. Evaluation report recommendations included RCTs (randomised control trials) with random sampling of teachers for classroom observations. In the final evaluation, recommendations relevant to M&E included the creation of an evaluation framework early in the project, the need for more precise indicators of success to guide project evaluation and more robust baseline assessments of teachers’ levels of English.