The South Asia region suffers from a dearth of professional evaluation expertise and the absence of a strong evaluation culture. Evaluation practitioners have limited access to high-quality academic courses and practical training in evaluation, which consequently has hindered the evaluation capacity in the region. Most countries do not have well established professional associations or networks that can facilitate exchange of academic advances and practical experiences. While the importance of evaluation in the achievement of national development results has been increasingly recognized in the public sector, among civil society organizations, the United Nations system and multilateral and bilateral development partners, there do not exist adequate systematic opportunities to generate the capacities in the countries in the region.

Responding to this need, a number of academic institutions in South Asia have come together to form TESA to consider the possibilities for establishing a regular professional diploma in evaluation in academic institutions. Such a course, offered as a regular academic programme, is a basic requirement for sustainable professional growth of evaluation competencies. The long term purpose of TESA is to build evaluation capacity in member institutions to expose and encourage students to higher levels of learning in evaluation and to establish training and research capacity.