Designing and Delivering Inclusive Education Systems .

Chemonics UK hosted a hybrid event on Wednesday 6 September 2023, 10.30-12.00 BST at Chemonics UK’s offices in London and online via Teams Live Events.

This event convened international development partners, donors, practitioners, and researchers to explore the challenge of designing and delivering inclusive education systems that provide formal education pathways for girls, vulnerable children, marginalised communities, and children with disabilities.

Participants explored examples of where various solutions – including safeguarding in conflict contexts and assessment methodologies that inform identification of vulnerable and under-performing children – have worked, and lessons learned. An expert panel of speakers addressed key questions including:

• What works when designing inclusive education systems and what does not? What are the key considerations and what can we learn from contexts including Syria, Rwanda, South Africa, and South Sudan?
• How can we prepare teachers to deliver inclusive education in large, under-resourced learning environments?
• How can we deliver effective safeguarding in conflict environments, and how can we use assessment methodologies effectively in diverse international contexts?

Chaired by

Louise Quy, Managing Director, Chemonics UK

Louise brings a wealth of expertise to her role as a passionate and strategic leader, with more than 20 years of progressive commercial and international development experience, working in international trade and development, banking, and professional services. As managing director, Louise provides strategic vision, leadership, commercial acumen, and management to Chemonics’ UK headquarters and its portfolio of international programmes. Passionate about combating climate change and violence against women, Louise currently serves as a trustee of WeForest and chair of Luminary Bakery. Prior to joining Chemonics Louise worked at Crown Agents, firstly as part of a turnaround team and latterly as chief commercial officer and supply chain lead. In this role, Louise led Crown’s response on both their COVID-19 supply chain offer and their Ukraine response.

Panellists included

Abdulkader Alaeddin, Team Leader, Syria Education Programme (Manahel)

Abd is a team leader overseeing the Syria Education Programme, and a monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning expert with 14 years of experience designing, implementing, and leading activities in conflict-affected areas across the Middle East, including in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey. Abd has experience designing and implementing grant programmes, including in the education and health sectors, and since 2013 has led MERL activities for various programmes in Syria, including stabilization and humanitarian programmes funded by the U.S. Department of State, USAID’s Office of Transition initiatives, the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, and the European Union.

Chantal Kabanda Dusabe, Technical Lead – School Leadership for the ACSL, VVOB – education for development

Chantal is the technical lead for school leadership for the African Centre for School Leadership (ACSL) at VVOB. She has more than two decades of experience working in education and development. Her role is to provide advice and technical support to VVOB and its partners in Rwanda and beyond in Africa in terms of promoting effective school leadership. She has been actively involved in the process of setting up the ACSL, a collaborative initiative between the Ministry of Education in Rwanda, VVOB, and other key partners.

Elizabeth Martin, Vice President, Programme Delivery, Chemonics UK

Liz Martin is a crisis, conflict, and transition specialist with a passion for delivering effective and meaningful development programming in FCAS settings. She has spent the last 20 years designing and delivering programming in countries like Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, Nigeria, and Haiti. She has been with Chemonics for the last 11 years and is currently serving as Vice President of Programmes for Chemonics UK. Prior to which she served as team lead for the DFID-funded Syria Education Programme, Manahel project, a £71 million project proving education and psycho-social support to more than 300,000 children in northwest Syria.

Martin Prew, Visiting Fellow, School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand

Martin is visiting fellow at Witwatersrand University School of Education. In the last ten years he has been an education consultant working on school and district leadership, curriculum and standards development, innovative approaches to early grade reading assessment and evaluation, and scoping projects in South Africa, Eritrea, Ghana, Namibia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Syria, and Uganda. Martin’s previous experience includes three years as executive director of the Centre for Education Policy Development (CEPD) in Johannesburg and five years as director in the national department of education in Pretoria, South Africa.

Ianthi Tsimpli, Professor of English and Applied Linguistics, University of Cambridge

Ianthi Tsimpli is Professor of English and Applied Linguistics at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of the British Academy. She teaches and researches in Multilingualism, Language Development, Language and Education and language in neurodiverse populations. Her work in the last ten years focuses on language and cognitive development in underprivileged children in India and how it is affected by language of education, multilingualism and socioeconomic status.

Watch the recording here