Invitation to Tender (ITT) for the supply of an end of programme external evaluation for Phase Three of UKIERI

The British Council, acting on behalf of the Board and Partners in UKIERI, wishes to commission an end of project evaluation. The evaluation will provide the Board and Partners, alongside their key stakeholders in India and the UK, an easy to communicate summary of the progress within the project timelines and make recommendations for ongoing programming in phase four.

The evaluation will build upon a recently conducted Evaluability Assessment, which updated the theory of change for the programme, and concluded that the structure of the UKIERI Phase three means that an impact evaluation is not advisable. It found that the outcomes of UKIERI do not have simple, congruent, proxy variables – rather they speak to leadership capacities, cross-cultural knowledge, and outcomes from a range of academic disciplines and partnerships. As such, we expect the evaluation to consider the use of a Theory-based evaluation, which digs deeply into a smaller number of process evaluation questions.

The evaluation should look at the extent to which UKIERI Phase three has delivered on its initial objectives and seek to understand (from Governance documents and KII) why not.  The evaluation should also look at a process evaluation around the M&E processes, with a view to strengthening the ability of future evaluations to speak to higher level outcomes with more rigour.

Purpose:

The purpose of this evaluation is to:

• Make an overall assessment of the extent to which UKIERI has provided an efficient and effective approach to achieve its outcomes;
• Ensure accountability against key results areas;
• Improve programme effectiveness, by understanding what works for whom and in what contexts, and thereby to support lesson-learning.

Timescale:

Terms of Reference:

• Desk reviews of the UKIERI programmes in the four UK entities and India, covering programme documents, progress reports, training materials, M&E data, outputs of the programme, etc;
• Semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders including funders, implementers and beneficiaries. This can be done through in-person interviews, remote-group or face-to-face calls, or focus groups.
• The evaluation should build, where possible, on the existing M&E data – key sources include the Secretariat monitoring data, and partners’ data on participation in leadership and skills training.

About UKIERI:

UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) started in April 2006 with the aim of enhancing educational linkages between India and the UK. Since then UKIERI has been recognised as a key multi stakeholder programme that has strengthened the research, leadership, education and now skill sector relations between the two countries. For more information log in to http://www.ukieri.org.