Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Education interventions in humanitarian settings often only reach limited scale. By rigorously tracking multiple innovation teams over several years, we were able to identify a number of new barriers and facilitators and better understand how the barriers and facilitators identified in earlier studies interact during the scaling process.

This paper presents a synthesis based on quantitative and qualitative data from evaluations of five education programs in refugee settings, as well as a randomized controlled trial and three quasi-experimental impact evaluations. The paper discusses findings related to how three main themes affect a program’s ability to scale:

• Context, including legal and institutional structure and security;
• Business model, including organizational management, financial resources, and partnerships; and
• Program ownership and advocacy, including community support, demand for the program, and political buy- in.

Findings indicate important lessons for pilot programs as they scale, including that most innovation teams scaled out before scaling up, that solidifying financial and organizational processes of a pilot program facilitates the scaling process, and that approaches to government engagement vary based on the context and the type of program.

The paper will make an important contribution to the evaluation evidence and policy dialogue on the barriers and facilitators to successfully implementing and scaling education programs in protracted crisis contexts.