The Zenex Foundation has invested over R1.5 billion in South African language and mathematics education since it was established in 1995. Deliberate monitoring and evaluation (M&E) have guided the foundation’s strategic decision-making, demonstrating how systematic evaluation can drive organisational learning, shape a foundation’s approach and influence systemic change in the education sector.
South Africa’s education landscape has delivered stubbornly poor learning outcomes despite significant public and private sector investment. According to the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), 81% of Grade 4 learners are unable to read for meaning in any language. South African Grade 5 and Grade 9 learners continue to rank extremely poorly according to the 2023 International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Essential questions remain over the causes underlying the country’s ongoing education challenges and the interventions that might reverse the narrative. Education sector donor Zenex Foundation has spent three decades applying rigorous M&E in the pursuit of answers.
Zenex challenges perceptions that M&E is an accountability exercise serving only to track delivery. Rather, Zenex uses evaluation as an essential tool to evolve its strategy, apply evidence to weigh its own assumptions and redirect resources, reshaping how the foundation contributes to South Africa’s education ecosystem.
Zenex’s commitment to M&E extends well beyond assessing the interventions it funds. The foundation is committed to supporting wider M&E practice, building evaluation capacity across the sector and sharing its learnings to inform sector knowledge and national policy.
Using evidence to guide strategy
Zenex’s commitment to evidence reveals an organisational humility that has driven several fundamental shifts in the foundation’s strategy. While the strategic focus on language and mathematics has remained constant, the way in which the foundation approaches these subjects has shifted, driven by evaluation findings. “What evaluation has helped us do is to hone in on where the leverage points are,” explains Zenex CEO Gail Campbell.
The national focus on improving maths and science outcomes at further education and training (FET) level in the early 2000s drove Zenex’s approach of targeting high-school learners with potential. While this project was successful in supporting learners to achieve quality passes in maths and science, as development sector narrative shifted towards how donors might drive systemic change, Zenex’s approach shifted from supporting individual learners to prioritising systemic change in language and mathematics education. “The foundation shifted its resources to catalysing systemic change, working with government to support language and maths in early grades.”
Evaluations published in Zenex’s report Perspectives on learning backlogs in South African schooling revealed fundamental mathematics education backlogs that impeded learner development. Campbell says that when results were disaggregated, learners consistently demonstrated foundational mathematical knowledge gaps from early years that compounded through their schooling. These findings directed Zenex to focus on dealing with backlogs in the lower grades.
Similarly, evaluations revealed the critical role of English language proficiency in mathematics performance at high-school level. For most learners who speak African indigenous languages at home, the transition to English as the language of instruction needs to be accompanied by high-school interventions that focus on both English language proficiency and mathematics.
More recently, evaluation findings have driven Zenex to support mother-tongue-based bilingual education in primary school. Learning outcomes are more likely to improve the longer children have the opportunity to learn in their mother-tongue African languages.
Learning backlogs remain a core focus, but the foundation is now exploring how educational technology, particularly artificial intelligence-powered adaptive learning platforms, can offer solutions at the required scale. Campbell says that while there is a commonplace understanding that children need to be introduced to technology in an increasingly technology-driven world, there is a need to develop more evidence on how ed-tech solutions can contribute to improved learning outcomes.
“We know children need to be digitally literate. We know that cognitively, the children in the generation of today are more able to adapt to technology, but now we have to match that with the education solutions we can use. What’s going to remain core in an education system is that all children need to learn to read and write and comprehend.”
Strategic shifts driven by M&E
- Early interventions are critical: Most learning gaps emerge in the foundation phase (Grades R–3).
- Language matters: Learners taught in their home language perform better.
- Teacher support is essential: Many educators lack the tools and training to teach literacy and numeracy effectively.
Fine-tuning measurement
Early in its journey, Zenex, like many others in the education sector, focused primarily on learner assessment results as the key indicator of success. However, the foundation has deliberately moved away from this simplistic approach, which shows whether learner outcomes improved but not necessarily on why.
Campbell explains that, when evaluating interventions, Zenex also examines short-term outcomes, such as changes in teacher knowledge, pedagogical practices and classroom behaviours. This allows the foundation to understand the causal chain between intervention activities and learner outcomes and to identify where breakdowns occur.
Zenex has also refined its interpretation of learner data. Rather than relying on averages that might mask important variations, disaggregated results track learner progression from baseline. For example, if Grade 8 learners begin an intervention performing at Grade 4 level in mathematics or reading and fail to reach Grade 8 level by the end of the intervention, traditional measures might register this as failure. However, disaggregated analysis reveals the progress made in addressing learning backlogs, providing a different lens through which to understand the learning impact.
Funding evidence-based education interventions
Campbell notes that although Zenex spends 12–15% of its budget on M&E, budgeting for evaluation is more about striking a balance between designing M&E that is fit for purpose within reasonable parameters. While more elaborate design enables more nuanced data collection, a balance must be achieved between the evaluation costs in relation to project costs.
Instead of allocating M&E budgets in a formulaic manner, the type of evaluation needed for each project and its stages drives the budget. A pilot project might require as much as 25% of the budget for evaluation, incorporating qualitative data collection, case studies and in-depth implementation analysis. Conversely, large-scale initiatives might allocate a smaller percentage of the budget to M&E while still conducting rigorous impact evaluations due to economies of scale.
Campbell says Zenex co-creates the M&E design with its implementing partners, responding to their organisational capacity and the project’s requirements. The foundation ensures that budgets account for partner engagement and capacity building throughout the evaluation process, with time allocated to feedback processes, report analysis and implementation implications.
This co-development approach extends to the design of monitoring instruments, which are collaboratively developed with implementing partners during theory-of-change discussions. The aim is to ensure partners understand and buy into what’s being measured, as measurement must align with the intervention design.
The power dynamics inherent in funder-grantee relationships can make honest feedback difficult. Zenex acknowledges this reality. Although externally commissioned stakeholder reviews have reported feedback that the foundation’s reporting requirements can be onerous, the challenge lies in the rigorous scope of partner reporting requirements rather than insufficient funding to cover M&E costs.
Yet Zenex’s interventionist approach appears to mitigate frustration. By maintaining constant feedback loops and problem-solving together with partners, Zenex has cultivated relationships in which M&E is perceived as a learning opportunity. “Implementing partners don’t feel they’re being evaluated under scrutiny, but that they are active in the process and there’s an element of learning that they can feed back into their organisations,” Campbell explains.
Zenex meta-review learnings
Over the past two decades, Zenex’s M&E approach has evolved in line with increasing focus on education evaluations. Strong, new educational evaluation capacity and expertise remain a necessity.
“Given the complexity of school interventions and the persistent poor performance of many schools and learners, it remains a priority that government, academia and the NGO-sector invest in more research and evaluation studies to produce results that can inform improved intervention and evaluation design.” – Prof. Johann Mouton, presenting ’The imperative of evidence-based studies in education in South Africa’ at the Zenex Foundation’s 30th birthday celebrations in October 2025.
Building M&E capacity
The foundation’s M&E capacity building ranges from individual organisational support to sector-wide interventions. This ecosystem approach recognises that strengthening M&E across the sector ultimately benefits everyone in the sector.
Zenex is among the organisations pioneering education M&E in South Africa and promoting the strengthening of M&E infrastructure. As an early funder of the South African Monitoring and Evaluation Association (SAMEA), Zenex supported the development of evaluation as a professional field. It also supported the development of the M&E topic on the Trialogue Knowledge Hub.
Zenex supports M&E training for education NGOs through the National Association of Social Change Entities in Education (NASCEE), shares its own M&E learnings and maintains openness to funders seeking to strengthen their own practices. Since its establishment, the foundation has invested in research and evaluation studies of targeted school interventions. Zenex partners with the University of Stellenbosch’s Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST), which is currently developing short courses on education evaluation.
How to contribute to building ‘evaluation intelligence capability’
Organisations should develop and institutionalise M&E to make evidence-based decisions about interventions.
- When commissioning evaluations, work with standardised templates for terms of reference that are aligned with the expected outcomes of such evaluations.
- When reviewing evaluation proposals and final reports, apply a tested evaluation-criteria framework to assess the quality, relevance and utility of evaluation findings.
- When summarising and extracting the findings from evaluation reports, apply standard protocol guides to translate findings into evidence-based recommendations for action and intelligent, context-sensitive strategic intelligence.
- Ensure that all staff involved in project management and reporting on evaluation results receive appropriate training and professional development in evaluation.
Source: Prof. Johann Mouton, presentation at the Zenex Foundation’s 30th birthday celebrations, October 2025.
Influencing the education ecosystem
As a relatively small donor in a large education system, Zenex recognises the limitations of claiming direct attribution. While Zenex has championed being evidence-based, it recognises the limitations of claiming any direct attribution to shifts in education policy and approaches. Campbell says that Zenex is part of influencing change in the education ecosystem.
One area of influence is the contribution to a decade-long evidence-building programme on literacy, conducted in partnership with the Department of Basic Education’s (DBE) Research Coordination and Monitoring, that has informed the DBE’s reading education strategy, particularly regarding structured learning approaches and teacher support for improving literacy outcomes.
The concept of learning backlogs provides another example of influence. Zenex evaluations, dating back to 2007, highlighted the extent of learning backlogs and the concept has now become embedded in the education discourse. The idea that teaching should happen at the level where children are, addressing foundational gaps before tackling grade-level curriculum, now informs intervention planning and curriculum delivery.
Zenex’s approach to policy influence is deliberately collaborative. “Our approach has never been oppositional advocacy,” Campbell comments. “Our approach has been to work within the system, working with government using evidence to influence shifts in policy and practice.
M&E advice for donors
1. Integrate M&E from the start
Evaluation design should be considered from the point of intervention conceptualisation, rather than an impact assessment afterthought.
2. Build in realistic budgets
M&E needs to be built into budgets, factoring in costs to both the funder and implementing partners. Grant budgets should include partner engagement time for evaluation processes.
3. Design fit-for-purpose evaluations
Avoid formulaic percentage allocations. Different projects and project milestones need different evaluation approaches and intensity.
4. Lean on M&E expertise
Organisations may not hold the necessary knowledge for effective M&E. Commissioning external expertise for evaluation design when needed can improve the quality of M&E.
5. Think long-term
Meaningful change, particularly in the education sector, takes time. Three-year cycles are often insufficient for demonstrating sustainable impact.
6. Share what works, and what doesn’t
The sector benefits when organisations are willing to share what doesn’t work openly alongside their successes.
A data-driven education future
As Zenex’s 2019–2025 strategic cycle concludes, M&E findings continue to shape the foundation’s future direction.
Zenex remains committed to strategic collaboration and donor partnerships to deliver system-level change. The provision of education basics in the form of literacy and maths and the need to serve South Africa’s most vulnerable learners more effectively, are at the heart of what drives Zenex’s commitment to evidence-based learning. Three decades on, rigorous M&E remains the foundation’s guiding compass.
