Monitoring and Evaluation
Verifying Employment
Monitor the classroom to identify and support poor performers. Skills training projects should follow-up with graduates after the classroom training ends to ensure that young people have the support they need to make the transition to wage or self employment. This phase of monitoring and job verification is particularly important if the project is working with vulnerable youth who may face greater challenges during their transition to work.
Monitoring after the training and verifying employment are critical for improving the quality of skills training projects. Skills training projects need to move beyond providing skills and toward improving employment outcomes. The best way to make this happen is by improving the monitoring and verification of employment outcomes and holding service providers accountable for results. Projects can rely on self-reports from the service providers and then verify outcomes among a random sample of graduates.
AGI pilots monitored business and job performance and verified employment outcomes up to six months after the classroom training ended. The pilots relied on self-reports from the service providers, together with robust verification of a randomized stratified sample of trainees (~25 percent). Reported outcomes were verified among this random sample by talking with employers, nearby market women, and community members, and accessing the trainee’s business records. The percentage of employed youth in the sample was then extrapolated to the whole population who claimed to be employed by the training provider. In Liberia and Nepal, for instance, where the pilots implemented results-based contracts, this extrapolation was used as a basis for the final payment. Any inaccurate claims by the training providers proportionally reduced their payment and could even jeopardize their eligibility to participate in future rounds of training.
| Strategy | Resources and Tools |
| EPAG service providers and quality monitors continue to monitor EPAG graduates after the classroom training ends, visiting them at their jobs or businesses and using standardized tools to evaluate their performance. Good monitoring data helps the service providers identify and assist graduates who may be in need of additional support services. |
|
| During employment verification, EPAG quality monitors visit a random sample of the graduates to verify the employment outcomes reported by the service providers. In addition to collecting data from the EPAG graduate and her employer (if relevant), the monitor also triangulates responses from two other sources (for example, workmates, a colleague who is selling nearby or the market chairperson, and so on). |
|
