Strategic Partnerships for Higher Education Innovation and Reform (SPHEIR): mid-terms evaluation report

SPHEIR – Strategic Partnerships for Higher Education Innovation and Reform – is FCDO’s principal programme for higher education. Launched in 2016, SPHEIR aims to improve the quality, relevance, scale, accessibility and affordability of higher education and the performance, governance and influence of HE systems and institutions in FCDO focus countries, in order to promote inclusive growth and development. This report is of the mid-term evaluation (MTE) of the programme.
SPHEIR funds eight partnerships across many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Myanmar, Jordan and Lebanon. Between them, the partnerships include 58 formal partnership organisations: universities, educational NGOs, professional bodies, private sector and research units. SPHEIR is managed by a consortium led by the British Council. The total value of the current portfolio of SPHEIR grants is £30.05 million while the total value (SPHEIR grant and match funding) of partnerships is £39.37 million1.
The purpose of the mid-term is to capture progress against the outcomes, results and achievements of the SPHEIR programme. It provides progress on a number of indicators reported on during the baseline and sets the stage for the summative endline evaluation where it will be possible to assess the achievements of the programme as a whole in terms of intermediate outcomes and early contribution towards longer term outcomes and impact.
The over-arching framework for the evaluation is designed to answer the evaluation by measuring the impact, outcomes and effectiveness of the programme, and evidence for what works and why, at five different levels of assessment: