Primary education improvement project, phase II (PEIP II)

Evaluation covers the period 5/86-11/88. Excellent progress has been made during this ambitious and complex project, which has been strongly support by USAID/B and the Government of Botswana. TA has been of high quality and many project initiatives have been thoroughly integrated into MOE and UB institutions. The component to establish a two-year primary education specialization under the UB"s Masters of Education program has made significant progress: the Department of Primary Education (DPE) admitted its first 7 M.Ed. students in 8/88. DPE has also graduated 60 from its Bachelor"s and Diploma programs and 130 are currently enrolled. Toward the goal of localization, the DPE now has 6 Batswana lecturers and 2 more will be added by the end of the project. The DPE has also strengthened its research capacity. Implementation of a revised primary teacher training college (PTTC) curriculum is on track although somewhat delayed due to an overly optimistic initial assessment. The DPE has trained more than 30 Batswana PTTC tutors to the B.Ed. level. The third project component - to establish a 14-location in-service training network - is also generally on track, although MOE management problems have delayed both construction activities and the development of an MOE Department of Teacher Education. Localization in this component has been successful as well, with nearly all planning, implementation, follow-up, and evaluation conducted by Batswana. Several lessons were learned. (1) Implementation problems are created when timelines specified by the donor are incompatible with field conditions. (2) Project success is magnified under conditions of strong donor cooperation. (3) Staff training and localization of leadership are important components of effective institution building. (4) Prior to undertaking a decentralized inservice training model, a careful cost-benefit analysis should be conducted. (5) Batswana participation in policy-setting and decisionmaking was a key component of this project"s success.