Directorates
·	Director General's Office
·	Data Development
·	Strategic Evaluations
·	Partnership and Continuous Evaluations
Publications
·	Evaluation Reports
·	Evaluation Briefs
·	Labour Market Development Agreement Series
·	Lessons Learned Series
·	Evaluation Tool Kit Series
·	Evaluation Forum Newsletter
·	From Theory To Practice

Introduction

The CESG Formative Evaluation was undertaken to assess the relevance, design and delivery, and early impacts of the Canada Education Savings Grant Program, which is administered under the HRD Act. The evaluation process was undertaken January to October of 2002, three years after the program began operating.

The Learning and Literacy Directorate (LLD) has reviewed the formative evaluation report that was completed in November of 2002. We are pleased with the overall findings and the insight the evaluation provided. The management team believes the evaluation has correctly found that the program is relevant to the needs of Canadians in today's knowledge-based economy, that significant increases in the level and incidence of savings for children's post-secondary education have occurred since the introduction of the program, and that the program provides a model for efficient and effective alternative service delivery. Low levels of awareness—especially among lower income and lesser educated Canadians—remain an area where the program needs improvement. The following is management's response to further details in the evaluation report.

Positive Findings

The formative evaluation has provided clear evidence that the program has had a positive impact on the savings behaviour of Canadian families for their children's post-secondary education. There has been a significant increase in the incidence of saving for PSE—the percentage of taxpayers with children under 19 years of age who contributed to an RESP rose from 4.1% in 1998 to 7.2% in 2000. Furthermore, average contributions have also increased significantly since the first year of the program¹.

The CESG is a key program in Canada designed to encourage adults to save for the future PSE of children through a combination of tax-sheltered income-earning savings and grant.

CESG administrative data systems, developed in coordination with promoters' systems, provide secure, quick and efficient delivery of grant. The systems permit an alternative delivery model that is extremely efficient, has low error rates² and allows the program to be delivered to every household in Canada.

The Program was pleased to see that even families with very modest incomes were participating in the program. For example, the evaluation found that 16.5% of families participating in the program have family incomes of only $20-40,000, slightly less than their representation within the population. Furthermore, visible minorities and persons with disabilities were more highly represented among CESG Subscribers than among non-subscribers, thereby contributing to the objectives of the Government of Canada as outlined in Knowledge Matters.

Areas for Improvement

The CESG formative evaluation report also identified five areas where improvements could be made.

1) Lack of awareness of the program among non-subscribers has been identified as an area of concern. The Program identified this concern early and developed a promotion strategy to address the low levels of awareness in regions with poor take-up of the program by developing relationships with regional offices in Quebec, Manitoba, and New-Brunswick and by focusing on direct marketing efforts at the community level. The CESG Program has also recently piloted a project where Program information materials were inserted into National Child Tax Benefit Program mail outs to those eligible for the benefit, namely those families with low-incomes.

Several characteristics of subscribers were identified as being influential in predicting RESP take-up. These suggest a cultural dynamic where parents with higher education are more aware of the multiple benefits of education and therefore invest more in their own children's education. Families with lower incomes are often left unaware of the CESG Program or they lack an adequate understanding of its benefits. The Program recognizes that financial literacy may play an important role in non-subscribers overall awareness of the Program and the long term benefits of saving for PSE.

2) Clarification of the roles and responsibilities of the promoters and partners is one area where the program is striving to improve. The program has taken a number of steps to improve our partners' expectations and understanding of their roles and responsibilities: a) promoter and trustee agreements were revised to reduce existing ambiguities, and b) agreements have recently been negotiated with our Systems partners and another is under development with CCRA.

The Program also recognizes that promoters do not always fully understand their reporting requirements. We have begun to provide technical support to promoters to help them meet the Program's reporting requirements. There are several other measures the Program has taken to clarify for promoters their reporting requirements. These include developing clearer forms for conducting business, improving training and information sessions, and developing a dedicated website to provide technical information requested by promoters.

3) Although the evaluation found that, in general, the CESG Program provided a favourable level of client service to both clients and its partners, it found that e-mail and call centre response times were slow. The program remains conscious of the need to always strive to improve service delivery. To this end the Program is developing a client service strategy to improve the quality of our service delivery.

4) The evaluators have challenged the program's ability to provide adequate contact data of subscribers required for the summative evaluation. We are currently looking at different options, both automated and manual, that would improve the quality of subscriber contact information maintained in CESG systems. In addition, it should be noted that Promoters and Trustees are another source of subscriber contact information for the summative evaluation and are contractually obligated to provide CESG with contact and transactional information.

These obligations are outlined in agreements that govern the relationship between the Program, Trustees, and Promoters.

5) Finally, the formative evaluation recommends that the summative evaluation should include a concerted effort to measure the net impacts of the Program on PSE savings and RESP take-up. The Program concurs with the recommendation that an expert advisory panel be convened to develop a method for assessing the incremental impact of the program and looks forward to an active role on the advisory panel.

Concluding Remarks

The CESG management team appreciates the excellent work conducted by the evaluators. The data gathered throughout this evaluation will provide the foundation for further program development. It is the intention of the program to discuss the results of the evaluation with its delivery partners in an effort to perfect the program and to improve client service.

Footnotes

1	Table 5.5 of Final Report, Mean RESP Contributions and CESG Grants by Year and by Type of Plan.
2	Approximately 7% of transactions reported by promoters are rejected as errors. No funds are paid on these rejected transactions until the appropriate corrections are made and the transactions re-submitted.