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The Jacobs Foundation has launched a new research consortium that will focus on digital learning environments and cross-curricular competencies in Swiss primary schools. The ongoing transformation of educational systems, accelerated by the pandemic, has generated new opportunities for learning innovations that are supported by technology. Titled DEEP (Digital Education for Equity in Primary schools), the consortium aims to investigate ways to maximize the positive effects of the digital transformation on primary-school aged learners while accounting for potential risks.

The core outcomes of the consortium are to: 

• Produce rigorous evidence to address key evidence gaps evident in national research agendas and inform national education plans.
• Present rigorous evidence accessibly by synthesizing existing high-quality research relevant to national education needs and curating high-quality resources from global reviews.
• Promote evidence adoption and implementation in policy and school practice with a focus on children’s learning outcomes by supporting practitioners and policymakers to better understand evidence and promote its use in the design and evaluation of education practices.
• Integrate evidence in basic and continuous teacher training at teaching training universities. In Switzerland, these universities represent the most direct pathway to scalable impact at both the classroom and individual child levels.

The consortium has been designed as a partnership between seven institutions that reflect the institutional, geographical, political, and methodological diversity of Switzerland. The coordination office of the consortium will be led in tandem by École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Pädagogische Hochschule Zürich (PHZH).

The research agenda of the consortium will be aligned with the Foundation’s focus on learning variability. It will also be determined in consultation with key stakeholders from across the education system, including local authorities, teachers, and school heads. Relevant governance and mechanisms will be set up to ensure participation of policy and practice throughout the design and execution of the research. Research activities are currently scheduled to start in January 2024. 

DEEP is one component of the Foundation’s programmatic work in Switzerland and serves as the EdLab mechanism in the country. EdLabs are evidence-driven partnerships that join education authorities, domestic research institutions, and practice-oriented professional bodies to promote evidence-based change in policy and practice. They aim to improve learning outcomes for all children by 1) producing and synthesizing rigorous evidence, 2) sharing evidence in a way that’s relevant and accessible, and 3) supporting evidence adoption and implementation in policy and school practice.

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Zurich, October 17, 2022: Economist Impact’s Learning Ecosystems Framework, commissioned by the Jacobs Foundation and launched today, offers a tool to understand the enabling factors of effective learning ecosystems that can provide opportunities to benefit children’s learning and wellbeing. The framework has been applied to 20 countries covering almost 50% of the world’s children. The findings are based on a survey conducted by Economist Impact of 2,000 teachers and young people (aged 18–20), and supplemented by additional data and desk-based research.

• Most teachers polled (70%) feel encouraged by their school to personalise instruction to the needs of individual students, but only 50% report they have adequate time to spend with each pupil.
• On average, 33% of young people felt that their family’s finances prevented them from accessing education resources, such as computers or educational books, while 30% reported an interruption to participation in school activities.
• Across the countries studied, data from UN Habitat shows that open spaces are available to approximately 60% of the population. However, only a third of young people surveyed report easy access to green spaces, play facilities and pedestrian spaces in their communities growing up.
• One in five young people do not engage in any form of community-based or after-school activity, including extracurricular activities, summer learning programmes, work-based learning, environmental protection activities, community service activities and cultural activities.

Although a majority of teachers surveyed across 20 countries included in this study (70%) feel encouraged to personalise instruction to the diverse individual needs of students, just half report they have adequate time to spend with each child. This creates a risk for student motivation, as the research also shows that students in countries where teachers have more time for one-on-one interactions are among the most likely to report that they tried hard in school. These were some of the key findings of the Learning Ecosystems Framework, launched today. The framework was developed by Economist Impact, The Economist Group’s bespoke research service, and commissioned by the Jacobs Foundation.

Amid renewed momentum to ‘reimagine education’, after the Covid-19 pandemic impacted 1.6 billion learners around the world, this research aims to encourage policymakers to consider education beyond the classroom.

This framework, the first of its kind, provides a diagnostic tool for understanding the strengths of different environments – the school, the home, and the wider community – that together contribute to young people’s learning and wellbeing. Consisting of almost 200 indicators and sub-indicators, identified based on interviews with over 20 experts, and a review of more than 70 sources of literature, it assesses the key factors that enable learning ecosystems to develop and thrive. It offers countries a way to measure how their own learning ecosystems are performing – and how to develop them further.

The framework was tested and applied to 20 diverse countries covering 50% of the world’s children, based on a survey of 1,000 teachers and 1,000 young people (aged 18-20) and additional data and desk-based research.

The research also found that in the home, one-third (33%) of students surveyed felt that their family’s finances prevented them from accessing education resources, such as computers or educational books, while 30% reported an interruption to participation in school activities. This, says the report, shows a need for governments to better support low-income families. In many of the countries studied, a lack of access to education resources at home correlates to poorer learning outcomes, such as lower levels of reading proficiency.

Outside the classroom, community facilities such as green spaces and play areas have been linked to children’s physical, social, and emotional wellbeing, while also contributing to their problem-solving, decision-making, and creative thinking skills. However, just one-third of the young people polled had access to these types of facilities growing up, despite UN Habitat data showing that open and green spaces are available to 60% of populations across the countries studied. Urban infrastructural development must therefore do more to cater to the needs of young people.

Moreover, one in five young people polled do not engage in any form of community-based or after- school activity, such as extracurricular activities, summer learning programmes, work-based learning, environmental protection activities, community service activities or cultural activities. One way to remedy this could be to introduce policies to encourage participation. The study showed that almost half of the countries assessed do not have policies in place on extracurricular learning.

The study also showed that education policy is evolving beyond traditional academics, and the vast majority of countries studied (more than 80%) are expanding curricula to essential 21^st century competences, like digital skills, creativity, critical thinking, global citizenship, collaboration and sustainability.

Fabio Segura and Simon Sommer, co-CEOs of the Jacobs Foundation, said:

“We hope that this Learning Ecosystems Framework will help countries understand how well their learning ecosystems are performing and how they can be supported to further evolve. But this framework is only the first step in a long process. We are calling on governments to collect and share more data and evidence on how different environments contribute to students’ learning and wellbeing. Only then will we be able to ensure that all children can realize their full learning potential and thrive.”

Key global findings from the Learning Ecosystems Framework:

• Most teachers polled (70%) feel encouraged by their school to personalise instruction to the needs of individual students, but only 50% report they have adequate time to spend with each pupil.
• Although four in five teachers see the value of collaborating with external partners beyond the school, less than 20% report that their school is actively engaging with external institutions and actors.
• On average, one in five young people (18%) do not engage in any form of community-based or after-school activity, including extracurricular activities, summer learning programmes, work-based learning, environmental protection activities, community service activities and cultural activities. These findings vary substantially across countries, from only 2% not engaging in such activities in China, to 32% in the UK.
• Across the countries studied, open and green spaces are available to approximately 60% of the population. However, only a third of young people report easy access to green spaces, play facilities and pedestrian spaces in their communities growing up.
• 33% of young people felt that their family’s finances prevented them from accessing education resources, such as educational books, while 30% reported an interruption to participation in school activities.
• A large majority of countries (more than 80%) are expanding curricula to essential 21^st century competences, like digital skills, creativity, critical thinking, global citizenship, collaboration and sustainability.
• Fewer than half of countries studied have taken action to make corporal punishment in the home setting unlawful.
• Just four countries (Finland, New Zealand, Spain and the UK) have legally enacted flexible working options beyond temporary measures introduced during Covid lockdowns.
• While a large majority of countries have enacted four weeks of paid leave for mothers of new infants, few countries provide similar benefits to fathers or guarantee income security for mothers of infants. Finland is particularly ahead of the curve, providing both parents with an equal quota of 164 daily allowance days. The US is the only country without any national policy mandate to provide working mothers or fathers with paid leave.

Although there is a long way to go in creating thriving learning ecosystems, the research charts a way forward for policymakers and schools. At a basic level, schools need to forge closer bonds with parents and communities, and policymakers need to foster supportive relationships with schools. Teachers must be given the time and resources to pay attention to students’ diverse individual needs, while also managing their own wellbeing.

Above all, the Learning Ecosystems Framework highlights that a lack of data is hindering education systems’ ability to evolve into education ecosystems. It is therefore essential that countries develop comprehensive strategies that help policymakers understand how each learning environment contributes to children’s wellbeing. Without this, warns the report, we will continue to measure what we can easily observe, perpetuating a system where educational success is measured one- dimensionally.

This work forms part of the Jacobs Foundation’s Strategy 2030, a $500 million commitment to fund education research, support school systems, and generate the evidence needed to help build adaptive learning ecosystems.

About the Jacobs Foundation

The Jacobs Foundation is active worldwide in promoting child and youth development and learning. The Foundation was founded in Zurich by entrepreneur Klaus J. Jacobs in 1989. As part of its Strategy 2030, it has committed 500 million Swiss francs to advance evidence-based ideas for learning, to support schools in offering quality education, and to transform education ecosystems around the world. https://jacobsfoundation.org/

About the research

The Learning Ecosystems Framework was developed by Economist Impact and commissioned by the Jacobs Foundation. The research covers Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Côte D’Ivoire, Egypt, Finland, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, New Zealand, Poland, Qatar, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, UK, and US.

During the Learning Ecosystems Framework development process, Economist Impact reviewed over 70 sources of literature, and conducted interviews with more than 20 stakeholders representing international organisations and education foundations to understand what factors enable successful learning ecosystems at the national level. Economist Impact conducted country-level research and analysis through data collection and surveys with 1,000 teachers in public and private school settings, and 1,000 young people (aged 18-20).

Media contact:

Jacobs Foundation

Alexandra Guentzer, Chief Communications Officer
alexandra.guentzer@jacobsfoundation.org
Tel. + 41 (0) 79 821 74 29

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• The Luker Foundation, Luminos Fund, and Youth Impact recognized for education programs in Latin America and Africa
• All three Best Practice Prize recipients will be awarded CHF 200,000 ($203,000) each at a ceremony taking place in Zurich on 30 September
• They were selected from a shortlist of 10 finalists, all of whom will convene for a co-creation event, taking place on 1 October 2022, and are eligible for follow-on funding of up to CHF 150,000

The Luker Foundation, Luminos Fund, and Youth Impact have been named the recipients of the CHF 600,000 ($610,000) Klaus. J Jacobs Best Practice Prizes 2022. The three organizations are being honored for outstanding achievement and practice in advancing quality education, and will each receive CHF 200,000 ($203,000).

The three Best Practice Prizes will be awarded at a ceremony in Zurich on 30 September 2022. The recipients were selected from a shortlist of 10 finalists, all of whom will convene for a co-creation event, taking place on 1 October 2022. They will exchange knowledge and ideas on advancing learning, and will have the opportunity to partner with other shortlisted applicants to develop proposals for new projects. Two concepts will receive follow-on funding of up to CHF 150,000 ($153,000) each.

Fabio Segura and Simon Sommer, co-CEOs of the Jacobs Foundation, said:

“We want to warmly congratulate the Luker Foundation, Luminos Fund, and Youth Impact on being awarded a 2022 Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prize. These prizes were created to showcase the groundbreaking work that businesses, social ventures, and non-profits all around the world are doing to ensure children have access to quality education. There is not a moment to lose. By bringing to light the evidence of what works we can use it to implement solutions that can be tailored to learners’ diverse individual needs.

“We can’t wait to see what innovative ideas the Luker Foundation, Luminos Fund, Youth Impact, and our other 2022 Best Practice Prizes top 10 finalists are able to develop together at our co-creation event. With the deadline for SDG4 fast approaching, the education community must work together to jointly come up with solutions to ensure equitable education for all.”

The Luminos Fund

The Luminos Fund was recognized for providing education programs for out-of-school children aged 8-14 in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, helping them to catch up on three years of learning in just 10 months, then reintegrate into local government schools. Each year, over 90% of Luminos students advance to local government schools, and at least 75% remain in formal education after 12 months.

With a focus on learning-through-play and assessment-led pedagogy, the Luminos Fund strives to make learning a joyful experience, to equip students with a positive outlook on education. The program is delivered through community-based partners whose capabilities Luminos helps build, support, and oversee. Classrooms are taught by high-potential local young adults who Luminos trains to teach, thereby fuelling local education systems with much-needed trained resources.

To date, the Luminos Fund has supported more than 172,000 children across Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia, The Gambia, and Lebanon, and plans to reach an additional 200,000 students by 2024. They work with governments, advising on curriculum development, strategies, and national education policy.

Luker Foundation

The Luker Foundation was recognized for its ‘Let’s All Learn to Read’ flagship literacy program, which has so far benefited more than 700,000 children and teachers across Colombia and Panama. The initiative, which began in the Colombian city of Manizales and is backed by the Inter-American Development Bank and Harvard University, introduced an innovative phonetic teaching and learning method to improve literacy.

The program includes face-to-face and high-impact digital strategies, such as classroom management, and the synthetic phonics method. It provides fun learning materials to help children improve their reading and socio-emotional skills. It also offers personalized tools for struggling students, and tailored evaluations to identify learning gaps.

According to the Luker Foundation, proper implementation of the program for five years would increase reading performance on standardized tests by 30%. Governments and private foundations from Guatemala, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic have expressed an interest in joining the program, which the Luker Foundation hopes to extend to all Latin American countries.

Youth Impact

Youth Impact was recognized for ConnectEd, its remote, low-tech education program which delivers simple math tutorials by phone and text message. Tested originally in Botswana, and later in an additional five countries around the world (India, Kenya, Nepal, Uganda, and the Philippines), ConnectEd has been shown to reduce innumeracy by up to 31% for enrolled children and deliver the equivalent of one year of high-quality education per $100. The program, which has been shown to work when delivered by NGOs and scale with teachers within government systems, has reached over 25,000 children globally.

Based in Gaborone, Botswana, Youth Impact, is a grassroots, youth-led, evidence-based movement aiming to identify, adapt and scale up health and education programs by young people for young people. Last year it reached a milestone of having helped 100,000 young people across 10 countries.

Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes

Recipients must demonstrate outstanding achievement in advancing learning and education, and embrace variability in learning. Their projects should draw on scientific evidence, use a clear results framework, and must be sustainable, scalable, and financially viable. Finally, they must build on strong leadership and partner networks.

In memory of its founder, the entrepreneur Klaus J. Jacobs, who passed away in 2008, the Jacobs Foundation presents two awards every other year for exceptional achievements in research and practice in the field of child and youth development and learning. The Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize rewards scientific work that is highly relevant to society, and the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes honor exceptional commitment and innovative solutions of institutions or individuals.

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• 1001mots, headquartered in Paris, France, recognized for delivering language learning skills to disadvantaged children
• Three Best Practice Prize recipients will be awarded CHF 200,000 ($208,000) each and announced on 30 September at a ceremony taking place in Zurich
• All 10 finalists will convene for a co-creation event on 1 October, and are also eligible for follow-on funding of up to CHF 150,000

1001mots has been named a top 10 finalist for the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes 2022, a set of three awards each worth CHF 200,000 ($208,000) that honor outstanding achievement and practice in advancing quality education.

This Paris, France, based non-profit has set its sights on attacking the root cause of the 100,000 students in France leaving the education system with no diploma each year. Believing the root of the problem exists even before they enter school, 1001mots’ goal is to have fewer children entering school at age three with poor language abilities.

The three recipients of this year’s Best Practice Prizes will be announced at a ceremony in Zurich on 30 September 2022. For the first time, the 10 finalists will convene for a co-creation event, taking place on 1 October 2022. They will exchange knowledge and ideas on advancing learning, and will have the opportunity to partner with other shortlisted applicants to develop proposals for new projects. Two concepts will receive follow-on funding of up to CHF 150,000 ($156,000) each.

Awarded every other year, the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes recognize non-profits, businesses, and social ventures that are bringing forth innovative solutions to some of education’s biggest challenges.

Fabio Segura and Simon Sommer, co-CEOs of the Jacobs Foundation, said:

“We want to warmly congratulate 1001mots on becoming a top 10 finalist for the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes 2022. These prizes were created to showcase the groundbreaking work that businesses, social ventures, and non-profits all around the world are doing to ensure children have access to quality education. There is not a moment to lose. By bringing to light the evidence of what works we can use it to implement solutions that can be tailored to learners’ diverse individual needs.

“In the age of COVID, it is also important to share ideas and evidence of what works on the ground to help shift policy, particularly as education systems adapt to a new and unfamiliar terrain. That is why we are launching this new follow-on collaboration funding of up to CHF 150,000. We look forward to bringing together all 10 Best Practice Prize finalists for our co-creation event, and we can’t wait to see what inspiring concepts they come up with together.”

Florent de Bodman, co-founder and CEO of 1001mots, said:

“We are so thrilled to be recognized as a top 10 finalist for this prestigious award, particularly as it is based on such rigorous criteria. We would like to thank the Jacobs Foundation for shining a light on the important work that organizations around the world are doing to advance education, and we look forward to exchanging ideas with all the amazing 2022 Best Practice Prize finalists.

“We hope to use this incredible platform to share our learnings, and help even more young children in France and around the world develop their language skills, enabling them to thrive once they start school.”

1001mots

1001mots knows students from disadvantaged backgrounds are five times more likely not to reach the minimum required level of reading compared to those from advantaged families, the environment to which a child is exposed before school playing an essential role. Cognitive sciences show that between one and three years old, a toddler’s brain experiences its most favorable time window for language learning. A lack of early exposure to language causes a poor command of oral language likely to turn into a lasting disadvantage for a child entering kindergarten, as scientific studies show that early oral language skills are key to later school achievements.

Research shows crucial language stimulation differences exist between families, some children entering kindergarten at age three able to master only 500 words, compared to those with 1,000 words who have grown up in more stimulating environments. 1001mots focuses on strongly reducing school failure in low-income territories in France, to prevent future youth unemployment – there are an estimated 765,000 children under the age of three in France living in low-income families. 1001mots aims to give to all children prior to kindergarten the first 1,000 words necessary to thrive at school.

To do this, it provides distance support to parents with children, from birth to three years, to shift parent-child interactions in a quantitative and a qualitative fashion. It combines an evidence-based approach of behavior change, rigorous scientific evaluation and product research and development methods to develop an impactful individualized program tailored for vulnerable families. It consists of one-semester cycles of support (renewable at parents’ request) featuring three text messages a week; one book mailed every two months adapted to the child’s age; and one phone call by a speech therapist every two months.

Over the last four years, 1001mots has achieved strong results in its target areas, including supporting 4,000 children in 2022, up from 1,500 in 2020. After the first semester, almost 70% of parents register for a second cycle of support, and 80% say the program has been useful. A first randomized-control trial showed a 20% improvement on reading frequency and a 20% improvement on parent-child verbal exchanges. A second randomized-control trial found a 70% improvement on stimulating interactions and a three-fold increase in reading frequency for families with younger children up to a year old. With its program tailored for vulnerable families, 1001mots aims to have a systemic impact on poverty in France by reaching 100,000 children in 2026.

If 1001mots is named a recipient of one of the Best Practice Prizes, it plans to invest the winning funds in accelerating the scaling-up its program, extending its duration to produce a strong and lasting benefit on the child’s language development, producing 80 new pedagogical modules by 2024, investing in digital tools and simplifying processes.

Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes

Applications for the Best Practice Prizes 2022 opened on 6 January and closed on 10 February 2022. Recipients must demonstrate outstanding achievement in advancing learning and education, and embrace variability in learning. Their projects should draw on scientific evidence, use a clear results framework, and must be sustainable, scalable, and financially viable. Finally, they must build on strong leadership and partner networks.

In memory of its founder, the entrepreneur Klaus J. Jacobs, who passed away in 2008, the Jacobs Foundation presents two awards every other year for exceptional achievements in research and practice in the field of child and youth development and learning. The Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize rewards scientific work that is highly relevant to society, and the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes honor exceptional commitment and innovative solutions of institutions.

The post 2022 Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes – 1001mots appeared first on Jacobs Foundation.

• Botswana-headquartered Youth Impact recognized for ConnectEd, a remote, low-tech math tutorials program
• Three Best Practice Prize recipients will be awarded CHF 200,000 each and announced on 30 September at a ceremony taking place in Zurich
• All 10 finalists will convene for a co-creation event on 1 October, and are also eligible for follow-on funding of up to CHF 150,000

Youth Impact from Botswana has been named a top 10 finalist for the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes 2022, a set of three awards each worth CHF 200,000 ($208,000) that honor outstanding achievement and practice in advancing quality education.

Based in Gaborone, Botswana, Youth Impact, is a grassroots, youth-led, evidence-based movement aiming to identify, adapt and scale up health and education programs by young people for young people. Last year it reached a milestone of having helped 100,000 young people across 10 countries.

The three recipients of this year’s Best Practice Prizes will be announced at a ceremony in Zurich on 30 September 2022. For the first time, the 10 finalists will convene for a co-creation event, taking place on 1 October 2022. They will exchange knowledge and ideas on advancing learning, and will have the opportunity to partner with other shortlisted applicants to develop proposals for new projects. Two concepts will receive follow-on funding of up to CHF 150,000 ($156,000) each.

Awarded every other year, the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes recognize non-profits, businesses, and social ventures that are bringing forth innovative solutions to some of education’s biggest challenges.

Fabio Segura and Simon Sommer, co-CEOs of the Jacobs Foundation, said:

“We want to warmly congratulate Youth Impact on becoming a top 10 finalist for the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes 2022. These prizes were created to showcase the groundbreaking work that businesses, social ventures, and non-profits all around the world are doing to ensure children have access to quality education. There is not a moment to lose. By bringing to light the evidence of what works we can use it to implement solutions that can be tailored to learners’ diverse individual needs.

“In the age of COVID, it is also important to share ideas and evidence of what works on the ground to help shift policy, particularly as education systems adapt to a new and unfamiliar terrain. That is why we are launching this new follow-on collaboration funding of up to CHF 150,000. We look forward to bringing together all 10 Best Practice Prize finalists for our co-creation event, and we can’t wait to see what inspiring concepts they come up with together.”

Noam Angrist and Moitshepi Matsheng, co-Founders of Youth Impact, said:

“We are thrilled to be recognized as a top 10 finalist for this prestigious award. Jacobs Foundation is a global leader in connecting the dots between rigorous evidence and scaled action in education – a mission which is at the heart of our work. We innovated during the Covid-19 pandemic to generate some of the world’s first experimental evidence on distance education, enabling tens of thousands of children to learn during a time of historic need.

“We hope to use this platform to share our learnings, and continue finding new ways to provide affordable, low-tech, and personalized education solutions to students across Botswana and around the world. We would like to thank the Jacobs Foundation for shining a light on the important work that organizations around the world are doing to advance education, and we look forward to exchanging ideas with all of the amazing 2022 Best Practice Prize finalists.”

Youth Impact

Youth Impact’s ConnectEd is a remote, low-tech education program which delivers simple math tutorials by phone and text message. Tested originally in Botswana, and later in an additional five countries around the world (India, Kenya, Nepal, Uganda, and the Philippines) with 15,000 children during the COVID-19 pandemic, ConnectEd has been shown to reduce innumeracy by up to 31% for enrolled children and deliver the equivalent of one year of high quality education per $100. Through ConnectEd, Youth Impact has extended its reach beyond Africa to Nepal, India, and the Philippines, and reached over 25,000 children globally.

ConnectEd was declared a “Smart Buy” for improving learning in low- and middle-income countries by a global panel convened by the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel, co-hosted by World Bank, UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office, and UNICEF. Sixteen partners comprise ConnectEd’s research and implementing coalition, including the World Bank and the governments of Nepal and the Philippines.

Youth Impact’s latest results show that mobile phones provide a low-cost and scalable way to target and teach to a student’s level. Moreover, they find that teachers can be equally as effective at delivering the program as hired tutors, representing the possibility for a wider path to scale. ConnectEd shares principles with the Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) approach, another highly cost-effective education program. It is now seeking to understand how these two delivery models can be used together to produce the greatest impacts.

If Youth Impact is named a recipient of the Best Practice Prizes, it plans to invest the winning funds in further research how its phone-based approach and TaRL can further complement each other, including methods for optimally targeting delivery to reach students who are furthest behind; scale these targeted instructional approaches; and share its learnings and best practices widely to inform other global initiatives.

Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes

Applications for the Best Practice Prizes 2022 opened on 6 January and closed on 10 February 2022. Recipients must demonstrate outstanding achievement in advancing learning and education, and embrace variability in learning. Their projects should draw on scientific evidence, use a clear results framework, and must be sustainable, scalable, and financially viable. Finally, they must build on strong leadership and partner networks.

In memory of its founder, the entrepreneur Klaus J. Jacobs, who passed away in 2008, the Jacobs Foundation presents two awards every other year for exceptional achievements in research and practice in the field of child and youth development and learning. The Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize rewards scientific work that is highly relevant to society, and the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes honor exceptional commitment and innovative solutions of institutions.

The post 2022 Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes – Youth Impact appeared first on Jacobs Foundation.

• Brussels-headquartered VVOB, which partners with education actors in Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, Cambodia, Ecuador, Vietnam, and Belgium, recognized for improving the quality of learning
• Three Best Practice Prize recipients will be awarded CHF 200,000 each and announced on 30 September at a ceremony taking place in Zurich
• All 10 finalists will convene for a co-creation event on 1 October, and are also eligible for follow-on funding of up to CHF 150,000

VVOB – education for development has been named a top 10 finalist for the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes 2022, a set of three awards each worth CHF 200,000 ($208,000) that honor outstanding achievement and practice in advancing quality education.

The non-profit operates in Cambodia, Ecuador, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, Vietnam, Zambia and Belgium, with its headquarters in Brussels, working on sustainably improving the quality of education.

The three recipients of this year’s Best Practice Prizes will be announced at a ceremony in Zurich on 30 September 2022. For the first time, the 10 finalists will convene for a co-creation event, taking place on 1 October 2022. They will exchange knowledge and ideas on advancing learning, and will have the opportunity to partner with other shortlisted applicants to develop proposals for new projects. Two concepts will receive follow-on funding of up to CHF 150,000 ($156,000) each.
Awarded every other year, the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes recognize non-profits, businesses, and social ventures that are bringing forth innovative solutions to some of education’s biggest challenges.

Fabio Segura and Simon Sommer, co-CEOs of the Jacobs Foundation, said:

“We want to warmly congratulate VVOB on becoming a top 10 finalist for the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes 2022. These prizes were created to showcase the groundbreaking work that businesses, social ventures, and non-profits all around the world are doing to ensure children have access to quality education. There is not a moment to lose. By bringing to light the evidence of what works we can use it to implement solutions that can be tailored to learners’ diverse individual needs.

“In the age of COVID, it is also important to share ideas and evidence of what works on the ground to help shift policy, particularly as education systems adapt to a new and unfamiliar terrain. That is why we are launching this new follow-on collaboration funding of up to CHF 150,000. We look forward to bringing together all 10 Best Practice Prize finalists for our co-creation event, and we can’t wait to see what inspiring concepts they come up with together.”

Katelin Raw, Global Communications Lead at VVOB, said:

“We are so thrilled to be recognized as a top 10 finalist for this prestigious award, particularly as it is based on such rigorous criteria. We would like to thank the Jacobs Foundation for shining a light on the important work that organizations around the world are doing to advance education, and we look forward to exchanging ideas with all the amazing 2022 Best Practice Prize finalists.

“We hope to use this incredible platform to share our learnings, and support even more teachers and school leaders across Africa and around the world, ensuring children everywhere can access the quality education that is their birthright.”

VVOB

VVOB engages in long-term partnerships with national governments, working closely with structures in charge of supporting the professional development of teachers and school leaders. Country agreements allow VVOB to closely support the ministries of education with technical assistance to achieve their objectives and sustain them over time. Strategic partnerships also strengthen VVOB’s evidence base as it refines program interventions. Additionally, VVOB identifies the most promising innovations for teachers’ professional development and school leadership development and brings those to scale. Multidisciplinary VVOB teams support the professionalization of teachers and school leaders by strengthening institutions responsible for their professional development and guidance. VVOB’s work centers on education policies in the respective partner countries, existing good practices, lessons learned, and evidence. To systematize scaling, VVOB collaborated with other education organizations to create a publicly accessible knowledge product, the ‘Education Scalability Checklist’ – which is used across VVOB programs to inform the scaling process, program design and adaptations.

VVOB has been a pioneer in promoting effective school leadership in education systems, for example, supporting the establishment of a School Leadership and Management Unit at the Rwanda Basic Education Board, and elaborating national standards for effective school leadership, and the professional development of more than 3,000 school leaders. Building on this work and to bring the successes to regional scale, VVOB is now closely collaborating with the Government of Rwanda to establish an African Center for School Leadership to promote effective school leadership in the African region. School-based teacher and school leader professional development is one of the strategies that has proved highly effective, with VVOB successfully using this model in South Africa (reaching 58,288 teachers and school leaders) Uganda (reaching 900 teachers) and Vietnam (reaching 3,981 teachers and school leaders).

If VVOB is named a recipient of one of the Best Practice Prizes, it plans to invest the winning funds in in the African Center for School Leadership, one of the three ‘flagships’ in its Learning Unlimited strategy to support governments and their partners across the continent in school leadership initiatives, starting with Ghana and Kenya.

Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes

Applications for the Best Practice Prizes 2022 opened on 6 January and closed on 10 February 2022. Recipients must demonstrate outstanding achievement in advancing learning and education, and embrace variability in learning. Their projects should draw on scientific evidence, use a clear results framework, and must be sustainable, scalable, and financially viable. Finally, they must build on strong leadership and partner networks.

In memory of its founder, the entrepreneur Klaus J. Jacobs, who passed away in 2008, the Jacobs Foundation presents two awards every other year for exceptional achievements in research and practice in the field of child and youth development and learning. The Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize rewards scientific work that is highly relevant to society, and the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes honor exceptional commitment and innovative solutions of institutions.

The post 2022 Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes – VVOB appeared first on Jacobs Foundation.

• London-headquartered Save the Children recognized for learning catch-up programs for school returners after pandemic lockdowns in Uganda, Myanmar, and Colombia
• Three Best Practice Prize recipients will be awarded CHF 200,000 each and announced on 30 September at a ceremony taking place in Zurich
• All 10 finalists will convene for a co-creation event on 1 October, and are also eligible for follow-on funding of up to CHF 150,000
• Save the Children has been named a top 10 finalist for the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes 2022, a set of three awards each worth CHF 200,000 ($201,000) that honor outstanding achievement and practice in advancing quality education.

Headquartered in London, UK, and formed in 1919, Save the Children is one of the world’s leading humanitarian aid organizations for children. When schools worldwide first closed in March 2020 to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, it turned its attention to the devastating impact this was having on children.

The three recipients of this year’s Best Practice Prizes will be announced at a ceremony in Zurich on 30 September 2022. For the first time, the 10 finalists will convene for a co-creation event, taking place on 1 October 2022. They will exchange knowledge and ideas on advancing learning, and will have the opportunity to partner with other shortlisted applicants to develop proposals for new projects. Two concepts will receive follow-on funding of up to CHF 150,000 ($151,000) each.

Awarded every other year, the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes recognize non-profits, businesses, and social ventures that are bringing forth innovative solutions to some of education’s biggest challenges.

Fabio Segura and Simon Sommer, co-CEOs of the Jacobs Foundation, said:

“We want to warmly congratulate Save the Children on becoming a top 10 finalist for the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes 2022. These prizes were created to showcase the groundbreaking work that businesses, social ventures, and non-profits all around the world are doing to ensure children have access to quality education. There is not a moment to lose. By bringing to light the evidence of what works we can use it to implement solutions that can be tailored to learners’ diverse individual needs.

“In the age of COVID, it is also important to share ideas and evidence of what works on the ground to help shift policy, particularly as education systems adapt to a new and unfamiliar terrain. That is why we are launching this new follow-on collaboration funding of up to CHF 150,000. We look forward to bringing together all 10 Best Practice Prize finalists for our co-creation event, and we can’t wait to see what inspiring concepts they come up with together.”

Luke Hayman, Head of Operations and Innovation of Save the Children’s Safe Back to School Task Team, said:

“We are so thrilled to be recognized as a top 10 finalist for this prestigious award, particularly as it is based on such rigorous criteria. We would like to thank the Jacobs Foundation for shining a light on the important work that organizations around the world are doing to advance education, and we look forward to exchanging ideas with all the amazing 2022 Best Practice Prize finalists.

“We hope to use this incredible platform to share our learnings, and help even more children around the world catch up on the learning they lost during the pandemic. Now more than ever, it’s important we all work together to prevent wasting the potential of an entire generation.”

Save the Children

Save the Children’s Catch-up Clubs (CuC) are the organization’s solution to overcome the impact of the pandemic on children’s education around the world. COVID-19 disrupted learning for 1.6 billion students globally, putting an entire generation of children at risk of never achieving their potential. CuCs provide children with the foundational learning needed to successfully return to school. They support children aged 8-13 in upper primary grades who are furthest behind to achieve basic proficiency in literacy and numeracy. Activities are delivered in intensive cycles to accelerate learning, accompanied by ‘wrap-around support’, such as child protection services and cash vouchers for families to cover education expenses, to address barriers to education and promote regular attendance.

By engaging children at their learning level and addressing social and economic barriers to education, CuCs provide tailored support to improve learning outcomes, ensure children’s safe return to school, and reduce dropout rates. Key indicators and a comprehensive learning agenda will measure the short- and longer-term impacts of CuCs on children’s literacy and numeracy gains, their ability and confidence to stay in school, and their sense of safety and well-being.

Pilot CuCs have launched in Uganda, Myanmar, and Colombia, and preparations are underway to launch or further scale clubs in Nigeria, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Malawi, and the Philippines during 2022. Early results from CuC pilots show improvement in children’s literacy in just 13 weeks. In Uganda, six times more children achieved the highest reading level than at the start of the program. In Colombia, 100% of children who remained in CuCs reached foundational literacy skills. Additionally, qualitative insights from beneficiaries, including children and their parents, demonstrate positive impact in engagement and progress in learning.

If Save the Children is named a recipient of one of the Best Practice Prizes, it plans to invest the winning funds in a larger-scale study to understand and improve upon the effectiveness, cost, and speed of the CuC model, and to share the results to advocate for investment and uptake of Catch-up Clubs on a global scale.

Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes

Applications for the Best Practice Prizes 2022 opened on 6 January and closed on 10 February 2022. Recipients must demonstrate outstanding achievement in advancing learning and education, and embrace variability in learning. Their projects should draw on scientific evidence, use a clear results framework, and must be sustainable, scalable, and financially viable. Finally, they must build on strong leadership and partner networks.

In memory of its founder, the entrepreneur Klaus J. Jacobs, who passed away in 2008, the Jacobs Foundation presents two awards every other year for exceptional achievements in research and practice in the field of child and youth development and learning. The Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize rewards scientific work that is highly relevant to society, and the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes honor exceptional commitment and innovative solutions of institutions.

The post 2022 Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes – Save the Children appeared first on Jacobs Foundation.

• Movva, headquartered in São Paulo, Brazil, recognized for AI-based platform that brings children and parents closer together, and combats school dropout
• Three Best Practice Prize recipients will be awarded CHF 200,000 each and announced on 30 September at a ceremony taking place in Zurich
• All 10 finalists will convene for a co-creation event on 1 October, and are also eligible for follow-on funding of up to CHF 150,000

Movva has been named a top 10 finalist for the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes 2022, a set of three awards each worth CHF 200,000 ($208,000) that honor outstanding achievement and practice in advancing quality education.

The São Paulo-based organization operates primarily in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, sending weekly reminders and encouragement messages (also known as ‘nudges’) directly to students’ or caregivers’ cell phones to engage them in their own, or their children’s, school life.

The three recipients of this year’s Best Practice Prizes will be announced at a ceremony in Zurich on 30 September 2022. For the first time, the 10 finalists will convene for a co-creation event, taking place on 1 October 2022. They will exchange knowledge and ideas on advancing learning, and will have the opportunity to partner with other shortlisted applicants to develop proposals for new projects. Two concepts will receive follow-on funding of up to CHF 150,000 ($156,000) each.

Awarded every other year, the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes recognize non-profits, businesses, and social ventures that are bringing forth innovative solutions to some of education’s biggest challenges.

Fabio Segura and Simon Sommer, co-CEOs of the Jacobs Foundation, said:

“We want to warmly congratulate Movva on becoming a top 10 finalist for the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes 2022. These prizes were created to showcase the groundbreaking work that businesses, social ventures, and non-profits all around the world are doing to ensure children have access to quality education. There is not a moment to lose. By bringing to light the evidence of what works we can use it to implement solutions that can be tailored to learners’ diverse individual needs.

“In the age of COVID, it is also important to share ideas and evidence of what works on the ground to help shift policy, particularly as education systems adapt to a new and unfamiliar terrain. That is why we are launching this new follow-on collaboration funding of up to CHF 150,000. We look forward to bringing together all 10 Best Practice Prize finalists for our co-creation event, and we can’t wait to see what inspiring concepts they come up with together.”

Caroline Schulz, co-CEO of Movva, said:

“We are so thrilled to be recognized as a top 10 finalist for this prestigious award, particularly as it is based on such rigorous criteria. We would like to thank the Jacobs Foundation for shining a light on the important work that organizations around the world are doing to advance education, and we look forward to exchanging ideas with all the amazing 2022 Best Practice Prize finalists.

“We hope to use this incredible platform to share our learnings, and support even more families across Brazil and around the world, helping children everywhere thrive in school.”

Movva

Movva mobile phone ‘nudges’ content is non-curricular, entirely aimed at bringing children and parents closer together, discouraging child labor and violence against children, and making education top-of-mind, despite the impeding pressures of poverty-induced financial worries. Movva leverages insights from behavioral sciences to identify the most important constraints that might affect student and parenting behaviors – such as self-limiting beliefs, mindsets, cognitive biases, and social pressure – then framing messages to effectively overcome them. It also applies machine learning algorithms to customize and target communication, based on what is predicted to work best for each student, using a combination of data on student characteristics, previous academic records, and interactions with the messages. During the pandemic, Movva supported over two million students and their families across Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guatemala and Honduras. It is launching in Malawi this year, in collaboration with the non-profit Give Directly.

In the short-term, if messages reach students and caregivers as intended, children’s school life becomes top-of-mind, motivating pupils to engage in learning and parents to monitor them more closely, to show up at school more often, and to encourage parents to incentivize their children to continue studying. In turn, students find greater motivation to study, attend school, and allocate more hours to homework. In the medium-term, children feel more supported by their parents, and experience improved socio-emotional skills, higher attendance and higher numeracy and literacy skills. This helps reduce school dropout rates, leading to more students completing their degrees. In the long-term, quality education helps improve society as a whole. Educated young people access better job opportunities, and act as responsible citizens in their communities, with a higher quality of life.

Movva’s platform uses artificial intelligence to meet the specific needs of each student. It offers multimedia content that can effectively change student behavior, but also allows schools to create their own videos for students, with the help of a virtual assistant that guides users to record different versions of the same message, inspired by behavioral profiles, and then activates AI to match each video to the students that would benefit the most from each version.

Movva’s nudges have been shown to improve learning outcomes and decrease grade repetition and school dropouts across Brazil and Côte d‘Ivoire. As its product is a Software as a Service (SaaS) and because it is cloud-based, it can be easily deployed anywhere in the world, in partnership with governments and local schools.

If Movva is named a recipient of one of the Best Practice Prizes, it plans to use the winning funds to scale up in Brazil and Côte d’Ivoire, and double down on investments to better engage with local stakeholders in both countries. It will also invest the funds in improving its technological capacity, with the objective of scaling nudges more efficiently, at lower cost – critical for both government and low-fee private schools.

Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes

Applications for the Best Practice Prizes 2022 opened on 6 January and closed on 10 February 2022. Recipients must demonstrate outstanding achievement in advancing learning and education, and embrace variability in learning. Their projects should draw on scientific evidence, use a clear results framework, and must be sustainable, scalable, and financially viable. Finally, they must build on strong leadership and partner networks.

In memory of its founder, the entrepreneur Klaus J. Jacobs, who passed away in 2008, the Jacobs Foundation presents two awards every other year for exceptional achievements in research and practice in the field of child and youth development and learning. The Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize rewards scientific work that is highly relevant to society, and the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes honor exceptional commitment and innovative solutions of institutions.

The post 2022 Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes – Movva appeared first on Jacobs Foundation.