COL's response to the Multilateral Aid Review, conducted by the UK Department for International Development, August 2010 

Notes to the Reader:
1) Supporting documents can be accessed through the links indicated in the text.
2) An addendum to COL’s response to the DFID Review – supplemental questions from DFID and COL’s answers, September 2010 – appears below. 
3) COL’s response to an additional review question posed on 22 October re: country-level spending – also appears below.
4) On 30 November 2010, COL received a letter from the UK Department for International Development thanking us for providing all the requested information for the DFID Multilateral Aid Review, which the department found valuable. The letter states that DFID has “taken the decision to remove COL from the list of organisations being formally assessed under the Multilateral Aid Review. It was judged inappropriate to include an organisation the size of COL alongside other much larger multilaterals such as the World Bank.” The letter further offers that, “emerging findings indicate that COL is performing well.” A copy of the letter received from DFID is available here.
5) On 31 May, the Department for International Development released the results of its Review: Taking Forward the Findings of the UK Multilateral Aid Review (dated March 2011). While the Commonwealth Secretariat is one of the subjects of this report, it does not include any assessment of the Commonwealth of Learning. Point 4 above explains why COL was not included in the final stages of the review and is not named in the final report.

Background

1. The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) is an intergovernmental organisation created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning/distance education knowledge, resources and technologies. It operates in a very open and transparent manner.
2. COL’s assistance primarily targets developing Commonwealth countries. It works in three-year-planning cycles. Its work during the Three Year Plan (TYP) 2009-12 is grouped into two sectors: ‘Education’ and ‘Livelihoods & Health’. 
3. COL’s current TYP commenced on 1 July 2009 and will be completed on 30 June 2012. Set within a Results-Based Management (RBM) framework, the TYP has a logic model containing statements of impacts and outcomes. Corporate level performance indicators for each of the two sectors have been identified. At the end of each planning cycle COL reports to each country on its work for or within that country: ‘COL in the Commonwealth – 2006-2009 Country Reports. 
4. COL is funded by voluntary contributions from some 40 Commonwealth member states. The six major donors, each with a seat on the Board of Governors, are Canada; India; New Zealand; Nigeria, South Africa and the United Kingdom.
5. The UK contribution, presently £1.1 million annually, is the responsibility of DFID.

Addendum to COL’s response to the DFID Review
Supplemental questions from DFID and COL’s answers

1. We would like to include more practical examples of how COL's work has contributed to development outcomes at a country level (eg we have the example that in livelihoods and health it has reached >10,000 directly in rural communities using ICT tools). We think that going through Connections would unearth this type of material, but felt you might quickly be able to give us the best examples.

Response:

In our original submission we provided a link to the set of country-by-country reports on COL’s work that we submit to Commonwealth Member States every three years. We also provided individual links to the reports for the countries of special interest to the Review, namely DFID: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan; and Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

In order to operate efficiently COL conducts much of its work with groups of countries at regional level, across the whole Commonwealth, or based on common interests (e.g. small states). This is reported in the 2009-2010 programme update report.

The following lists some of the outcomes being achieved through recent work in countries and groups of countries:

• Bangladesh: Ten teaching faculty trained in case study method in management studies.
• Botswana: A capacity building project on mainstreaming Child Friendly School (CFS) models and approaches into pre-service and in-service teacher education curricula was carried out and CFS standards and indicators for teacher education were developed and disseminated.
• Cameroon: An Open School initiated and curriculum developed. The University of Buea adopts dual-mode teaching.
• Gambia: COL helped a partner an institution to develop materials for the training of head teachers and school principals. The training commences in January-March 2011.
• Ghana: COL helped a partner institution to develop materials for the training of head teachers and school principals. The training commences in January-March 2011.
• India: Action Plan for a capacity-building unit for the National Institute for Open Schooling to support the state open schools. Faculty members of 14 Open Schools trained in Monitoring and Evaluation and Copyright. 6,000 women farmers receive daily advice on goat rearing by mobile phone. COL/CEMCA gave assistance in setting up 70 community radio stations and was solely responsible for increasing the number to around 100 from a mere 13 in 2007. The quality assurance in multimedia materials version 1.0 developed by CEMCA is in use in all the 17 Educational Multimedia Research centres of India. The development of materials for Green Teacher on-line (a diploma course on environmental education for teachers) were completed and piloted with the Centre for Environmental Education, Ahmadabad. The online course begins in January 2011. Open and distance learning (ODL) materials for the Diploma in Guidance & Counselling course at NCERT developed.
• Jamaica: Thirty teacher educators trained in use of COL’s Quality Assurance Toolkit. University of Technology implements COL’s Review and Improvement Model for quality assurance. Ten teacher trainers trained in print and online instructional design.
• Kenya: Maseno University adopts dual-mode teaching. Nurse educators from eight Kenyan universities trained to develop distance learning materials for rural nurse upgrading. Diploma course accredited by Kenya Nursing Council, being offered by 30 Nurse Training Centres with 5,000 enrolments.
• Lesotho: A capacity building project on mainstreaming Child Friendly School (CFS) models and approaches into pre-service and in-service teacher education curricula was carried out and CFS standards and indicators for teacher education were developed and disseminated.
• Malawi: The mother and child health programme has directly engaged some 3,000 women learners in Chichewa (their local language), with as many as 30,000 or more indirect listeners/learners. A capacity building project on mainstreaming Child Friendly School (CFS) models and approaches into pre-service and in-service teacher education curricula was carried out and CFS standards and indicators for teacher education were developed and disseminated.
• Malaysia: CEMCA developed its Quality Assurance in Multimedia Learning Materials manual in association with the Department of Education, Government of Malaysia and it is being tested by various universities. The EasyNow multimedia web presentation package developed by CEMCA is in demand in various Malaysian universities.
• Maldives: Internet radio (iRadio) was launched and is in the process of being upgraded into a full fledged community radio. The $75 educational laptop developed by COL’s CEMCA Unit is in use in a primary school in an atoll. CEMCA is providing capacity building to convert the entire Grade III mathematics book into an interactive mini-laptop friendly format.
• Mauritius: The Cabinet headed by the Prime Minister of Mauritius has approved the launching of ODL-based capacity building programme on empowerment aimed at 30,000 unemployed women by the Ministry of Gender Equality, Child Development and Family Welfare. COL and its partner the National Productivity & Competitiveness Council helped the Ministry to develop the framework.
• Mozambique: COL has contributed to the introduction of a multimedia strategy, trained 25 teachers in Learner Support and translated the guide in Portuguese.
• Namibia: COL has contributed to the introduction of a multimedia strategy in four Open Schools and the introduction of multimedia lessons in eight subjects in Namibia. The content is available as Open Educational Resources (OERs). It will impact on the quality of the education of over 100,000 learners in Namibia and the OERs are also available to the rest of the Commonwealth.
• Nigeria: Katsina State University adopts dual-mode teaching. Sixty course tutors trained at the National Teachers Institute (NTI). 300 institutional staff and government officials trained in ODL methods. Two faculty members at the National Open University were trained in the case study method in management studies. COL helped a partner institution to develop materials for the training of head teachers and school principals. The training commences in January-March 2011. 35 teacher educators from six colleges of education were trained to develop effective quality assurance systems. The colleges used COL’s Quality Assurance Toolkit to develop Quality Assurance Frameworks for the internal assessment of their programmes. The National Commission for Colleges of Education adapted the quality indicators in COL-NAAC’s QA Tool kit for the external accreditation of the Nigeria Certificate in Education course offered by NTI and 112 colleges of Education and other NCE-awarding institutions. 60 Master trainers and 1200 course facilitators were trained on ODL tutoring at NTI Kaduna. 26 radio programmes on JSS Science and Mathematics developed for NTI kaduna’s “Teachers’ Radio. A capacity building project on mainstreaming Child Friendly School (CFS) models and approaches into pre-service and in-service teacher education curricula was carried out and CFS standards and indicators for teacher education were developed and disseminated.
• Pakistan: Two teaching faculty at the Allama Iqbal Open University trained in case study method in management studies.
• Rwanda: A capacity building project on mainstreaming Child Friendly School (CFS) models and approaches into pre-service and in-service teacher education curricula was carried out and CFS standards and indicators for teacher education were developed and disseminated.
• Sierra Leone: 60 teacher educators were trained on instructional design. 108 modules for the Higher Teachers’ certificate course (primary) year 1-3 at Freetown Teachers’ College were developed. COL helped a partner institution to develop materials for the training of head teachers and school principals. The training commences in January-March 2011. A capacity building project on mainstreaming Child Friendly School (CFS) models and approaches into pre-service and in-service teacher education curricula was carried out and CFS standards and indicators for teacher education were developed and disseminated.
• South Africa: A capacity building project on mainstreaming Child Friendly School (CFS) models and approaches into pre-service and in-service teacher education curricula was carried out and CFS standards and indicators for teacher education were developed and disseminated.
• Sri Lanka: The Central Bank of Sri Lanka has initiated a new microfinance policy. COL has facilitated collaboration between Central Bank of Sri Lanka and Open University of Sri Lanka in building the capacity of the human resources in the banking sector in microfinance through ODL. This initiative has the scope to reach large segment of the population of Sri Lanka. COL facilitated the National Seminar on Open schooling in June 2010 at the request of the National Institute of Education.
• Swaziland: A capacity building project on mainstreaming Child Friendly School (CFS) models and approaches into pre-service and in-service teacher education curricula was carried out and CFS standards and indicators for teacher education were developed and disseminated.
• Tanzania: COL has contributed to the introduction of a Multi Media strategy, trained 24 staff members of the Institute of Adult Education in Instructional design and enhanced their capacity in developing quality ODL content. COL developed the Guidelines for the Establishment & Management of Open Schools at the request of the Ministry of Education.
• Trinidad & Tobago: A capacity building project on mainstreaming Child Friendly School (CFS) models and approaches into pre-service and in-service teacher education curricula was carried out and CFS standards and indicators for teacher education were developed and disseminated.
• Zambia: COL developed the strategy for redesigning the Open School (ZACODE) in Zambia and has contributed to the introduction of a multimedia strategy in the Ministry of Education’s Directorate Educational Broadcasting Services. With BBC support, COL trained15 learners and six teachers to introduce the News Report (radio programme) in three schools. Capacity building was conducted for four teacher training institutions on the adaptation and use of the TESSA OERs. A capacity building project on mainstreaming Child Friendly School (CFS) models and approaches into pre-service and in-service teacher education curricula was carried out and CFS standards and indicators for teacher education were developed and disseminated. National policy drafted for ODL TVET which signals government intention to increase access to TVET using ODL approaches.

Regions, Consortia and Groups of Countries

• Consortium for the Commonwealth Executive MBA and MPA: (Bangladesh, Ghana, India, Jamaica, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan; Papua Guinea, Sri Lanka) 147 working managers and executives graduated this year with knowledge and skills that will strengthen their performance in the private and public sectors.
• Consortium for OERs for Senior Secondary Schooling (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Seychelles, Trinidad & Tobago, Zambia): COL is facilitating the development of Open Educational Resources (OERs) in these countries in 20 secondary school subjects. The content will greatly enhance access to quality open learning material. Training provided to the 100 teachers on this initiative has enhanced their capacity to integrate technology and develop quality distance education content. These teachers have become a valuable asset in each of the six countries where there is a shortage of instructional designers.
• Southern African Development Community (SADC): COL has sponsored more than 40 open and distance learning (ODL) practitioners in the SADC region who have completed their Post-Graduate Diploma in Distance Education. Their work impacts on the learning of more than 500,000 learners in the countries where they serve.
• Small States: The Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC) has emerged as a consortium of 32 governments and institutions and not a physical institution. It continues to capture the imagination of Commonwealth member states. As a result of the cascading effect of VUSSC workshops and courses a total of 1,608 people have been trained to a high level of competence in ICT, OERs and ODL. This is a major contribution to human resource development in these small populations. The VUSSC’s Transnational Qualifications Framework (TQF), was formally launched in Namibia in April 2010. It will facilitate the movement of courses among VUSSC countries and be a guarantor of their credibility.
• Pacific States: Twelve COL scholars graduated from The University of the South Pacific postgraduate diploma in legislative drafting and are contributing to policy implementation and good governance in several Pacific Islands. Thirty teachers trained in Instructional Design (Samoa, Solomon Islands, PNG). Fourteen educators from seven countries trained in writing vocational literacy materials and pilot course delivery through vocational centres and schools is taking place later this year.

2. We want to provide concrete evidence that COL has effective leadership. Beyond the evidence you have already provided, are there examples of where external partners have appreciated COL's leadership - eg, letters of appreciation, awards, mentions in Communiqués, etc?

Response:

2.1 Letters of appreciation:  A selection of extracts is available here.

2.2 Awards: The President and Vice-President of COL are both recognised internationally for their leadership in open, distance and technology-mediated learning. Each receives far more international speaking invitations than he or she can accept. The hundreds of speeches given internationally by members of COL’s Board, Staff and Senior Management are at www.col.org/speeches.
Since joining COL in 2004 Sir John Daniel has received ten honorary doctorates for his work from universities in five Commonwealth countries (Canada (5), Ghana, India (2), Malaysia and South Africa). He has been made a Senior Fellow of the European Distance Education Network (EDEN) and an Honorary Professor of the Tianjin TV University, China. He has received the Klassen Award of the International Council for Education on Teaching and the Symons Medal of the Association of Commonwealth Universities. In 2010 he published a new book Mega-Schools, Technology and Teachers: Achieving Education for All (Routledge).
Professor Asha Kanwar received the Individual Prize of Excellence from the International Council for Open and Distance Education in 2009.

2.3 Mentions in Communiqués: Extracts from recent Communiqués of Commonwealth Heads of Government meetings (CHOGM) and Conferences of Commonwealth Education Ministers, as well as references to COL in the reports of the Commonwealth Conversation organised by the Royal Commonwealth Society in 2008-09, are available here.

2.4 Leadership Performance Assessment: A Sub-Committee of the Board Executive Committee assesses the President’s performance annually on the basis of an agreed set of objectives. See COL's Governance Manual.

2.5 COL’s Awards: Every two years, after a Commonwealth-wide competition, COL makes Excellence in Distance Education Awards for 1) Institutional Achievement; 2) Distance Education Materials (Electronic and Traditional) and 3) Distance Education Experience (Students). These awards are highly sought after and winners refer to them in their institutional publicity for many years.

POLICIES – General Comment re questions 3, 4 and 5:
COL’s Board has taken the view that as a small organisation COL does not need formal policies in all the areas that might be appropriate for larger organisations. In 2007, for example, the Board reviewed a proposal for a Green Policy but chose not to proceed with it. The formal policies that are in place were identified in the main submission to the Review. We list below the guidelines by which staff operate in the areas in question.

3. On transparency COL clearly publishes a great deal of information on the web, but does it formally have a Disclosure Policy governing this? Tangentially linked to this could we see a copy of your disclosure policy?

Response:

While COL does not have a formal disclosure policy, it operates under the following guiding principles:

• To every extent possible, all organisational information is made available publicly through COL’s website. COL’s culture of open and transparent operations is key to its public accountability. Board minutes, financial statements, COL’s Governance Manual and the President’s Quarterly Reports to the Board of Governors are accessible by anyone through COL’s website at www.col.org/GovInfo.
• Confidentiality of personal information of employees, consultants and other contacts, however, is maintained. COL does not provide access to its contacts/mailing list, even for a fee. Names and photographs of employees and partners are only published with permission. While salary bands and other human resources information is made available to all employees, it is not publicly available. When a specific position is advertised, salary bands for that position are published.
• While COL, as an international organisation hosted by the Canadian Government in Canada, is not subject to Governmental “access to information” provisions, COL has always observed local laws in its operations and as such would respond appropriately to requests for information from the public, media, etc.
• The vast majority of COL’s publications, consultants’ reports and other documentation are freely available on COL’s website. Those that are not contain sensitive information about our partners. These reports are, however, available through COL’s Information Resource Centre (www.col.org/irc).
• All of the content of COL’s website, publications, consultants’ reports, etc. (except in the rare case that COL is providing access to third-party copyrighted material) are published under Creative Commons, CC-BY-SA licensing which allows unrestricted use and adaptation by third parties so long as they provide attribution to the source and, in turn, publish their resulting material as CC-BY-SA as well (http://creativecommons.org).
• COL consults regularly with the public. Through its website and e-news bulletins COL posts background material and seeks input on such matters as developing its Three-year Plans, comments on blog posts (www.col.org/blog), and observations on its publications (www.col.org/publications).
• “Event reports”, such as employee “Trip reports” are considered internal documentation only because they often include personal insights and opinions on external partners and COL’s relationship with them. These would, however, be available through access to information requests.

4. There are a set of questions about whether COL has policies guiding how it should undertake work in difficult settings (fragile states, post conflict settings), and whether it provides training for staff on this.  We assume you do not, and have argued that this is not relevant to the type of work that COL undertakes, but would value your confirmation of this?

Response:

COL has not undertaken any work in fragile states and post conflict settings and therefore has not developed policies guiding how it should undertake work in difficult settings.

However, we have received from our UN contacts their security training CD-ROMs and could make them available to COL staff and consultants as a resource should the need arises for work to be undertaken in fragile states and post conflict situations.

5. Does COL have policies governing how environment and climate change are mainstreamed across the organisation as a whole (ie to ensure that COL considers these aspects in all of its work)?

Response:

As noted above, COL’s Board chose not to formalise a Greening Policy in 2007. Its guidelines for Environmental Sustainability are:

• COL is committed to contributing to sustainable development by harnessing the potential of open distance and technology-mediated learning in its programme.
• COL is participating in greening initiatives by encouraging environmentally friendly and sustainable choices in the products it uses, by reducing its consumption of office supplies and by promoting recycling.
  
  

Country-level spending

Purpose:

This is COL’s response to the additional review question posed on 22 October:
“COL has previously provided regional information on programme expenditure but this is not sufficient, there is a need for country level programme spend information”.

Caveats:

The information requested is provided below with the following caveats:

• Item 2 of the Multilateral Aid Review Assessment Framework (Geographic fit) uses the phrase: ‘allocates aid to countries…”.
  COL does not operate as a donor agency by allocating aid to countries. Instead COL helps countries to improve the scope, quality and sustainability of their education and learning systems through various inputs related to the use of new, technology-based approaches: partnership facilitation (e.g. the 32-country partnership in the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC); implementation of models (e.g. the Lifelong Learning for Farmers Model for enhancing rural prosperity); policy development (e.g. for open schooling at secondary level as a follow-up to Universal Primary Education); capacity strengthening (e.g. in the development and use of Open Educational Resources); and materials creation (e.g. the Commonwealth MBA and MPA programmes developed and used by institutions in 8 countries). Despite its focus on innovative approaches and technology-enhanced learning COL does not donate equipment, having found that doing so endangers sustainability.
• Although COL does not ‘allocate aid to countries’ it has a very strong country focus, as evidenced by the Country Action Plans that are developed for each of the 54 Commonwealth countries and regularly updated. Every three years, at the triennial Conferences of Commonwealth Education Ministers, each Minister receives a detailed report of COL’s work in that country. These reports convey the intensity of COL’s engagement with each country.
• Earlier in its history COL did attempt to break down its spending by country but COL’s Board of Governors concluded that this was not a cost-effective way of reporting and asked for expenditure reporting by Commonwealth regions (4) and Pan-Commonwealth.
• However, to respond to DFID’s additional review question, for 2009-2010 COL has broken down its programme expenditure in the field, which makes up two-thirds of COL’s total budget, by country using the following methodology: 
• Education Specialists reviewed each activity undertaken in the year and itemised the Commonwealth member countries impacted by that activity.
• Each country impacted was expressed as a percentage of the total activity cost.
• All activity costs were grouped and country percentages consolidated by total programme expenditure.  
• The 30 active member countries of the Virtual University for the Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC) are attributed each with an equal share of the total VUSSC expenditure in the year.
• COL’s expenditures on programme services (e.g. Knowledge Management), stakeholder engagement and organisational management have not been attributed to the country level.

 The results are given in the table below.

• This methodology is inevitably less precise than would be the case with a donor agency allocating funds to country projects. Nevertheless, it gives a fair indication of the geographical distribution of COL’s programme expenditures for the above period.  Where it was not possible to indicate a country, the broad Pan-Commonwealth allocation has been retained.

   Distribution of expenditure by country (Commonwealth):

Commonwealth Member Country	Percentage of Programme Expenditure by Country
Antigua & Barbuda	0.4%
Australia	0.0%
Bahamas	0.6%
Bangladesh	1.8%
Barbados (The)	0.4%
Belize	0.7%
Botswana	4.0%
Brunei Darussalam	0.4%
Cameroon	0.5%
Canada	0.0%
Cyprus	0.4%
Dominica	0.5%
Fiji	0.0%
Gambia (The)	0.7%
Ghana	1.7%
Grenada	0.4%
Guyana	1.3%
India	13.7%
Jamaica	2.9%
Kenya	3.1%
Kiribati	0.0%
Lesotho	3.3%
Malawi	1.9%
Malaysia	0.9%
Maldives	1.8%
Malta	0.4%
Mauritius	1.7%
Mozambique	0.7%
Namibia	4.2%
Nauru	0.2%
New Zealand	0.0%
Nigeria	5.6%
Pakistan	0.4%
Papua New Guinea	2.4%
Rwanda	0.6%
St. Kitts & Nevis	0.4%
St. Lucia	0.4%
St. Vincent & The Grenadines	0.4%
Samoa	1.3%
Seychelles	1.8%
Sierra Leone	2.7%
Singapore	0.0%
Solomon Islands	2.5%
South Africa	3.4%
Sri Lanka	3.9%
Swaziland	1.9%
Tanzania	2.2%
Tonga	0.8%
Trinidad & Tobago	4.1%
Tuvalu	0.6%
Uganda	1.3%
United Kingdom	0.0%
Vanuatu	0.6%
Zambia	4.5%
Pan-Commonwealth/Other	9.6%
TOTAL	100.0%