Assessment of Factors that Determine Successful Implementation of School Improvement Projects in Rwanda: A Case of the Whole School Development (WSD) Project in UNICEF Supported Child Friendly Schools

This study sought to examine the determinants of successful project implementation of projects in the Rwanda educational sector by focusing on education quality improvement projects particularly the Whole School Development (WSD) initiative which is implemented by IEE Rwanda with support from UNICEF in selected Child Friendly Schools (CFS). The WSD initiative has implementation challenges such as limited administrative support from school leaders, poor project monitoring and evaluation by the implementer and low levels of school readiness to implement the project. This study hence, sought to assess how these influence successful implementation of the project. The objective of this study is to analyze the role of monitoring and evaluation in successful implementation of the WSD project in UNICEF supported child friendly schools in Rwanda. A likert scale questionnaire was used for data collection and the data was analyzed by way of SPSS 20 using descriptive techniques such as frequencies. The findings indicate that project monitoring and evaluation influence the successful implementation of school improvement projects in Rwanda. Specifically, project monitoring and evaluation was found to have the strongest influence from regression analysis results in terms of contribution to successful implementation of the project when other factors are controlled for. This was followed by organizational readiness to implement while project team training was found to make the least significant contribution to prediction of successful project implementation among all variables in the model. The study recommends among other things that there should also be a fully fledged M& E Staff on the WSD project, the M& E staff should regularly check on project implementation progress in order to ensure successful implementation and that there should be clear guidelines for quality M& E processes on the WSD project as this was found to positively affect successful implementation of the project.