The Commonwealth Scholarship Commission takes its responsibility to monitor and evaluate the impact of its awards very seriously. For some years we have undertaken regular monitoring of our awards through anonymous satisfaction questionnaires and annual reports from supervisors and award holders, as well as regular analysis of completion and submission rates. In addition to this, in 2008, we launched the CSC Evaluation Programme, a three-phase programme which aims to identify and quantify the impact of our awards on individual scholars, on institutions, and on a wider scale on communities and societies.
The outline of the programme was designed following a workshop hosted by the CSC at Cumberland Lodge in May 2007. Participants at the workshop, including Commonwealth Scholars and Fellows and representatives from CSFP national agencies and other funding organisations, drew up guidelines leading to the design of the programme, which commenced in September 2007:
Phase 1 involved building on and maintaining the database we already hold to ensure that we have a sound and reliable source of basic data.
Phase 2 involved the design and distribution of an alumni survey. The initial results of this survey were published in a report launched at the annual Welcome Day for new Scholars and Fellows, in London in November 2008. A further more detailed report was published in June 2009.
Phase 3 involves identifying key areas of interest and, using the Phase 2 data as a starting point, undertaking further investigation into the impact of Commonwealth Scholarships these areas. The first report, a regional study on the Caribbean, was published in November 2009 and launched at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Trinidad and Tobago. The first sector study, on the impact on health, was published in May 2010. Work is already underway on reports looking at impact in the higher education sector and on democracy and governance.
For further information about the CSC Evaluation and Monitoring Programme, contact:
Rachel Day
Commonwealth Scholarship Commission
c/o The Association of Commonwealth Universities
Woburn House
20-24 Tavistock Square
London WC1H 9HF
United Kingdom
evaluation@cscuk.org.uk
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