Technical Assistance for the monitoring of the Secondary Education Modernisation Programme in Tunisia

Detailed description of project Back

The overall objective of the EC assistance is to improve the performance of secondary education in Tunisia against international standards and to help secondary education contribute to a greater degree to young people’s chances of employment by providing paths that prepare them for higher education and/or the labour market. The EC provides budgetary support to the sector programme, directly disbursed to the Treasury, accompanied by a component subject to the contractual rules of the EC.

To support the Delegation in Tunis in the monitoring of this programme, the Commission decided to contract the services of a team of experts for four monitoring missions over a period of two years. These missions will on the one hand assess the degree to which the indicators have been realised and collect the necessary documentation for the possible disbursement of instalments and on the other hand will be tasked with the update and evaluation of the institutional and regulatory framework. The main tasks fall into three broad categories:

Monitoring of the financing agreement: technical advice on the documentation submitted by the Tunisian authorities under their requests for disbursement, updating of the indicative implementation schedule, analysis of the MTEF, checking and analysing the additionality of the EC support with regard to the updated MTEF as approved by the departments involved.

Monitoring of the education reform: monitoring of the realisation of the agreed objectives and results to be obtained for the implementation of the reform, as well as the possible future direction of the reform, and analysing the actions taken, their efficacy and the impact on the stakeholders and beneficiaries of the reform.

Monitoring of institutional developments and management systems:

• Updated evaluation of control mechanisms for public expenditure and tendering procedures;
• On sector level: i) updated analysis of internal procedures for the preparation, follow-up and control of the budget, ii) analysis of financial flows, of the quality of the indicators for budget follow-up, and constraints to budget implementation, iii) analysis of the links between budget preparation and the MTEF, iv) analysis of the measures taken to improve the efficacy of budget management and the reforms or actions under way, more specifically the reform of the budget management by objective;
• Analysis and evaluation of the deconcentration/decentralisation process, the institutional capacity of the actors in the reform of sector, the M&E systems and the quality of the institutional dialogue and the system in place for consultation between the different actors and coordination with the donor agencies;
• Overview of the process for budget programming in the education sector.

Type of services provided

PROMAN provides the services of three experts:

• A team leader, expert in secondary education and education reform;
• An expert of the education sector in Tunisia;
• An expert in macro-economics and public finance.

At the end of each mission the experts prepare a report that includes all elements according to the three broad categories: financing agreement, education reform and institutional developments and management systems. Specifically:

• A summary of the objectives and results of the mission;
• A technical analysis of the documentation provided for the release of the variable instalments;
• An assessment of the progress made on theindicators;
• An updated evaluation of the institutional and regulatory framework and of public expenditure control mechanisms;
• A brief overview of other donors’ interventions.