Date of work: 2022 – 2023
Coronation has a long history of supporting education in South Africa and has worked with Trialogue for many years to review its social investment strategy and partners. With learners at the centre, its Capsule Programme is designed to include educators, principals, parents and the broader community, while its legacy projects promote and support secondary and tertiary education, and skills development.
In June 2022 Coronation retained Trialogue to provide input on its CSI strategy and to conduct a high-level review of ten corporate social investment and one consumer financial education partner, focusing on implementation practices, programme design, adaptations brought about due to Covid-19 constraints, evidence of outputs and outcomes and impact and scalability of programmes. Following this, in 2023, Coronation commissioned Trialogue to review its Capsule Programme.
Trialogue’s insights and recommendations were based on a review of internal Coronation documentation as well as reports submitted to Coronation by partners; written surveys completed by each of the partners; follow-up interviews with the leadership of partners; and site-visits with up to three beneficiary schools/sites per partner, selected randomly by Coronation. The Capsule evaluation was based on a best practice review, teaching intern and parent teacher surveys and key stakeholder and beneficiary interviews.
Trialogue found that most partners had made progress against the 2019 recommendations made in a similar review conducted by Trialogue, and most had increased their monitoring and evaluation efforts. All partners were faced with major challenges during Covid-19, which were generally well managed and prompted most partners to grow and adapt in positive ways from which they continue to benefit.
The Capsule evaluation found that the programme is broadly aligned to many of the strategies that have been proven to improve reading for meaning at a foundation phase. However, programme design and implementation improvements will be key to align more closely to these strategies and to enable better insights into Capsule for learning and strategic decision-making.
During 2023 and 2024 Coronation implemented many of the recommendations made by Trialogue, including increasing engagement with partners and internally across the business, as well as considering how to engage more in education policy.
“Trialogue’s report and presentation were excellent and reaffirmed with evidence and detail many of the perceptions we had of the Capsule programme.”
Wisahl Ganief, Group Head of Marketing, Coronation Fund Managers, 2024
“The quality of work that Trialogue delivered was of a high standard … Some really good feedback was that we must engage with our partners more, so we started attending partner engagements, going to meetings and workshops. We will also be bringing our partners together – can the ecosystem do better by engaging and learning from each other?”
Mary-Anne Musekiwa: Chief Financial Officer, Coronation Fund Managers, 2023
