Strengthening Rapid Education Response Toolkit

The first of its kind Strengthening Rapid Education Response Toolkit provides country or field-level Education teams practitioners and coordinators with a practical resource and advocacy tool to ensure education’s inclusion in first phase humanitarian response. This includes demonstrating and advocating for the importance of including education in RRMs for a holistic and child-focused response to non-education actors.

The body of evidence on issues and challenges of education rapid response has been limited and anecdotal, drawn mainly from research and evaluation of RRMs or other emergency response mechanisms in humanitarian action.To better understand education’s unique position in rapid response, the Strengthening Education in Rapid Response partnership developed new research over a two-year period (2020–2022) to expand the evidence base in this important area.

The research clearly underscores that to overcome challenges of including education in RRMs, it is important that country/field education teams can clearly articulate, both internally and externally, what separates a rapid education response from a broader EiE response. Typically, a rapid response is limited to three months or less and is restricted to the geographic areas of humanitarian crisis. Additionally, it is important that education teams explain the specific ways in which education can be life-saving, such as:

• Providing girls and boys with the protection of adult supervision with due diligence to child safeguarding in situations that are chaotic and often dangerous
• Providing girls and boys with life-saving messages such as how to stay safe during disease outbreaks, natural disasters, or conflicts, including in situations where there may be the presence of unexploded ordinances and heightened risks of children being subjected to gender-based violence, sexual exploitation and abuse, child labour, trafficking, and recruitment into armed forces or groups
• Providing girls and boys with improved access to critical goods and services such as school feeding, improved water and sanitation, family tracing and reunification services, health and protection referrals including for survivors of gender-based violence, and psychosocial support

Education teams will also need to consider the balance of supply versus demand-driven interventions, thinking through an appropriate timeline for moving from providing urgently needed supplies to enhancing teacher capabilities through financing, trainings, and system strengthening support.

Putting in place key preparedness actions is key to ensure impactful and effective rapid responses to sudden onset crises and shocks.

Key Takeaways

Prior to the onset of an emergency, whether it be conflict-related or due to natural/climate induced hazards, preparedness actions are critically important to ensure that the appropriate structures, including coordination entities, have been established to enable a quick and impactful Education in Emergencies response within the first days of a new humanitarian crisis or the sudden worsening of an existing crisis.

Operationally, preparedness should include an evaluation of available supplies, and efficiency of supply lines. To facilitate ease of procurement, and standardization across organization, materials should be grouped into kits. Suitability of cash and/or voucher assistance in lieu or supplementary to in-kind assistance should be assessed nation-wide in advance.

Additionally, coordination entities will need to ensure that resources, protocols, and staffing requirements are sufficiently available to facilitate rapid needs assessments and response in case of a new education emergency, and that communication lines with key education donors have been established in advance, communication is regularized, and donor relationships nurtured. Further, contingency plans should be developed which reflect plausible scenarios and accompanying responses, including situations whereby staff may need to be evacuated.

Engagement with the Ministry of Education at the national and sub-national levels should be a key preparedness activity. Education in Emergencies teams should be familiar with MoE long-term planning and strategic objectives, including as reflected in the national Education Sector Plan. Coordination entities and individual partners should have a solid understanding of MoE resources including curricula, language(s) of instruction, accelerated education programmes, and teacher availability and compensation structures, including recruitment and deployment of female teachers, and staffing schools in hard-to-reach locations.

 Recommended Use of Tools

1. Begin by regularly reviewing the Strengthening Rapid Education Response: Preparedness Checklist with partners to ensure you are ready to respond to shocks (recommended 1–2 working day workshop with partners).
2. Update your Strengthening Rapid Education Response: Preparedness Plan Template to ensuring key actions from the preparedness checklist are reflected as relevant (as regularly as required, but recommended minimum once a year).

The Strengthening Rapid Education Response: Preparedness Checklist provides a tool country teams should complete and regularly update. The checklist includes indicative information requirements such as needs assessment preparedness including maintaining an up-to-date Secondary Data Review (SDR), multi-hazard mapping (conflict, drought, floods, disease outbreak, etc), severity scoring of each geographic area, identification of triggers for an emergency response, partner presence and capacity mapping, as well as identification of most suitable first responders including considering the role of local actors for a faster and more impactful response, and preparing contingency planning if relevant. National and local actors are essential for rapid education response as they are usually present before the crisis, and remain long after; as such, engaging local actors in preparing for, responding to, and transitioning from a rapid to longer term response is critical.

Individual partners who have been identified as first responders must have nimble internal processes activated which facilitate timely dedicated education responses to new emergencies.

The Strengthening Rapid Education Response: Preparedness Plan provides a tool to action key preparedness activities for an impactful and effective rapid response to sudden onset emergencies. This tool is intended to be used side by side with Preparedness Checklist to develop a robust preparedness plan for country teams. Each section of the Emergency Preparedness Plan template provides guidance, tips, and links to other relevant resources from the Strengthening Rapid Education Response Toolkit. For an example of a Rapid Education Response Preparedness Plan, consult the Democratic Republic of the Congo example.

The Norwegian Refugee Council example of an ongoing Rapid Response Mechanism in South Sudan provides an overview of key elements for consideration when designing your rapid education response emergency preparedness plan. This includes examples of rapid response triggers, delivery, activities, and monitoring components. Country teams must also consider the risk environment for anticipated new crises (programmatic, operational, safeguarding, institutional, and financial risks) as well as risk appetite for each risk type, and actions to be taken to mitigate risk

For an example of risk planning, please see the ECW Risk Assessment Matrix. It should be noted that while there must be zero tolerance for some risks, such as those related to child safeguarding, in the first phase of a humanitarian response or scale-up, there should be some appetite for resource-based risks that will facilitate a speedier response, which will save lives. There will be a need to anticipate coordination requirements for the predicted new emergencies, including whether new coordination groups or entities should be established – for example, if a new influx of refugees is anticipated in a country with an activated Education Cluster, there may be a need for a refugee-specific working group; or, if an emergency is anticipated in a specific geographic area, there may be a need to establish a new sub-national working group or Education Cluster. For an example of establishing a new inter-agency co-coordination arrangement, please see the Sudan Refugee Education Working Group Terms of Reference and Shared Roles and Responsibilities.

Understanding children’s immediate education needs following a shock is foundational to shape relevant, effective, and accountable rapid education responses.

Key Takeaways

In the first few months of a humanitarian response, data collection and needs assessments should be kept to a minimum, only collecting information which will directly shape a programme approach and inform specific first-phase response interventions, with a view to greater inclusion, particularly of girls, children with disabilities, and the most vulnerable children.

When data collection is done, it should be through a multi-sectoral rapid needs assessment (RNA), to minimize cost, increase efficiency, and reduce the burden on the population in need. In countries with an activated, formalized RRM, education questions should be integrated into the RRM assessment question bank.

In some cases, it may be necessary to start programming before a needs assessment can be conducted, adopting a no regrets approach that may be more resource heavy with a greater likelihood of wasted resources and/or reduced efficiency and effectiveness of the planned programme, but which will reach children faster, save lives, and protect children’s overall wellbeing. In these instances, it will be important to rely on basic demographic information when available, including the number of people affected by the emergency, disaggregated by sex, age, and disability.

Recommended Use of Tools

Prior to the onset of an emergency, whether it be conflict-related or due to natural/climate induced hazards, preparedness actions are critically important to ensure that the appropriate structures, including coordination entities, have been established to enable a quick and impactful Education in Emergencies response within the first days of a new humanitarian crisis or the sudden worsening of an existing crisis.

Operationally, preparedness should include an evaluation of available supplies, and efficiency of supply lines. To facilitate ease of procurement, and standardization across organization, materials should be grouped into kits. Suitability of cash and/or voucher assistance in lieu or supplementary to in-kind assistance should be assessed nation-wide in advance.

Additionally, coordination entities will need to ensure that resources, protocols, and staffing requirements are sufficiently available to facilitate rapid needs assessments and response in case of a new education emergency, and that communication lines with key education donors have been established in advance, communication is regularized, and donor relationships nurtured. Further, contingency plans should be developed which reflect plausible scenarios and accompanying responses, including situations whereby staff may need to be evacuated.

Engagement with the Ministry of Education at the national and sub-national levels should be a key preparedness activity. Education in Emergencies teams should be familiar with MoE long-term planning and strategic objectives, including as reflected in the national Education Sector Plan. Coordination entities and individual partners should have a solid understanding of MoE resources including curricula, language(s) of instruction, accelerated education programmes, and teacher availability and compensation structures, including recruitment and deployment of female teachers, and staffing schools in hard-to-reach locations.

Meeting children’s immediate education needs in the first three months after a shock should be explicitly reflected in a rapid education response plan, with an emphasis on protective, life-saving and life-sustaining activities.

Key Takeaways

A rapid response plan should be a condensed time-bound version of the broader EiE programme, as reflected in the HRP and/or Education Cluster Strategy or equivalent, and should capture only the activities that are appropriate for the first phase of the response (up to approximately three months). Response plans should also describe the humanitarian consequences of the shock (based on rapid needs assessments), outline the key strategic objective of the rapid response, describe the capacity to respond as well as any anticipated constraints, identify whether a formalized RRM inclusive of education is activated in the country and describe the relevant coordination mechanisms, and finally, the response plan should list activities with clear output indicators, as well as a monitoring plan which captures both quantitative and qualitative data.

While rapid response activities may differ from the HRP in terms of the quantity of items required, and the specifications of materials (often using more local resources than the broader EiE response), it is likely that the outputs will already be reflected in the HRP (eg. provide temporary learning spaces), and can be drawn from this, ensuring a strong degree of alignment between the HRP and the rapid response.

Activities should be limited to those which are life-saving and immediately life-sustaining; activities should not at this stage include system strengthening components, although planning for bridging between emergency and longer-term programming, including improved learning outcomes and enhanced resilience, should be done as early as possible.

Recommended Use of Tools

Prior to the onset of an emergency, whether it be conflict-related or due to natural/climate induced hazards, preparedness actions are critically important to ensure that the appropriate structures, including coordination entities, have been established to enable a quick and impactful Education in Emergencies response within the first days of a new humanitarian crisis or the sudden worsening of an existing crisis.

Operationally, preparedness should include an evaluation of available supplies, and efficiency of supply lines. To facilitate ease of procurement, and standardization across organization, materials should be grouped into kits. Suitability of cash and/or voucher assistance in lieu or supplementary to in-kind assistance should be assessed nation-wide in advance.

Additionally, coordination entities will need to ensure that resources, protocols, and staffing requirements are sufficiently available to facilitate rapid needs assessments and response in case of a new education emergency, and that communication lines with key education donors have been established in advance, communication is regularized, and donor relationships nurtured. Further, contingency plans should be developed which reflect plausible scenarios and accompanying responses, including situations whereby staff may need to be evacuated.

Engagement with the Ministry of Education at the national and sub-national levels should be a key preparedness activity. Education in Emergencies teams should be familiar with MoE long-term planning and strategic objectives, including as reflected in the national Education Sector Plan. Coordination entities and individual partners should have a solid understanding of MoE resources including curricula, language(s) of instruction, accelerated education programmes, and teacher availability and compensation structures, including recruitment and deployment of female teachers, and staffing schools in hard-to-reach locations.

Advocating and mobilizing resources are critical to ensure children’s education needs are prioritized in the first phase response to a sudden onset emergency.

Key Takeaways

Advocacy is critically important at the outset of a new or escalating education emergency, to raise the profile of the crisis, mobilize funds, ensure education’s inclusion in the first-phase response, and forge linkages with other life-saving sectors such as nutrition, health, protection (including GBV) and WASH. Information Management personnel play a vital role in these functions. To quickly mobilize funding for Education, please consider Education Cannot Wait (ECW), Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), and/or Country-Based Pooled Funds (CBPFs) as appropriate funding mechanisms for education in rapid responses.

It is important to liaise with ECW and OCHA early and regularly to better facilitate information sharing and fast resource mobilization in an emergency. It is also advisable to advocate for flexible funding for regular Education in Emergencies programmes, to allow some reprogramming of funds if needed for a rapid emergency response. 

Recommended Use of Tools

Prior to the onset of an emergency, whether it be conflict-related or due to natural/climate induced hazards, preparedness actions are critically important to ensure that the appropriate structures, including coordination entities, have been established to enable a quick and impactful Education in Emergencies response within the first days of a new humanitarian crisis or the sudden worsening of an existing crisis.

Operationally, preparedness should include an evaluation of available supplies, and efficiency of supply lines. To facilitate ease of procurement, and standardization across organization, materials should be grouped into kits. Suitability of cash and/or voucher assistance in lieu or supplementary to in-kind assistance should be assessed nation-wide in advance.

Additionally, coordination entities will need to ensure that resources, protocols, and staffing requirements are sufficiently available to facilitate rapid needs assessments and response in case of a new education emergency, and that communication lines with key education donors have been established in advance, communication is regularized, and donor relationships nurtured. Further, contingency plans should be developed which reflect plausible scenarios and accompanying responses, including situations whereby staff may need to be evacuated.

Engagement with the Ministry of Education at the national and sub-national levels should be a key preparedness activity. Education in Emergencies teams should be familiar with MoE long-term planning and strategic objectives, including as reflected in the national Education Sector Plan. Coordination entities and individual partners should have a solid understanding of MoE resources including curricula, language(s) of instruction, accelerated education programmes, and teacher availability and compensation structures, including recruitment and deployment of female teachers, and staffing schools in hard-to-reach locations. 

Advocating and mobilizing resources are critical to ensure children’s education needs are prioritized in the first phase response to a sudden onset emergency.

 Key Takeaways

It is important that monitoring of a rapid EiE response is quick, limited to capturing information that directly informs the programming, and is adaptive to the context, including accounting for challenges accessing geographical areas of intervention, security constraints, and limited partner capacity and/or human resources. Monitoring should be both quantitative (aligned to the HRP when possible), and qualitative (requiring feedback from the communities in need, inclusive of children’s participation).

Recommended Use of Tools

Prior to the onset of an emergency, whether it be conflict-related or due to natural/climate induced hazards, preparedness actions are critically important to ensure that the appropriate structures, including coordination entities, have been established to enable a quick and impactful Education in Emergencies response within the first days of a new humanitarian crisis or the sudden worsening of an existing crisis.

Operationally, preparedness should include an evaluation of available supplies, and efficiency of supply lines. To facilitate ease of procurement, and standardization across organization, materials should be grouped into kits. Suitability of cash and/or voucher assistance in lieu or supplementary to in-kind assistance should be assessed nation-wide in advance.

Additionally, coordination entities will need to ensure that resources, protocols, and staffing requirements are sufficiently available to facilitate rapid needs assessments and response in case of a new education emergency, and that communication lines with key education donors have been established in advance, communication is regularized, and donor relationships nurtured. Further, contingency plans should be developed which reflect plausible scenarios and accompanying responses, including situations whereby staff may need to be evacuated.

Engagement with the Ministry of Education at the national and sub-national levels should be a key preparedness activity. Education in Emergencies teams should be familiar with MoE long-term planning and strategic objectives, including as reflected in the national Education Sector Plan. Coordination entities and individual partners should have a solid understanding of MoE resources including curricula, language(s) of instruction, accelerated education programmes, and teacher availability and compensation structures, including recruitment and deployment of female teachers, and staffing schools in hard-to-reach locations.