School Action Learning Exchange (SALEX)

SALEX supports schools to build evidence and implement promising practices.

The School Action Learning Exchange (SALEX) is a learning community of organizations that support schools, school leaders, and teachers by aggregating and sharing knowledge, building capacity, and implementing promising practices in schools. Its diverse set of founding members, who work across six continents, include national NGOs, multilateral institutions, and organizations supporting teacher and school leader capacity, among others.

SALEX members undertake a variety of collaborative activities to facilitate the generation and uptake of evidence, both within the community and for the broader education ecosystem.

SALEX Learning Agenda

Through a consultative design process with assistance from network facilitator Results for Development (R4D), SALEX members defined an initial learning agenda focusing on four topics:

• Building evidence and data into school and policy decisions:  Despite significant and rigorous evidence of promising practices and effective approaches in global education, this evidence is often not shared or integrated into school and policy-level decisions.
• Elevating and connecting teacher and school leader voices: Teachers and school leaders are at the heart of school-level change but they lack platforms to speak to each other and have their voices heard meaningfully in education policy.
• Integrating foundational skills and wellbeing, including alleviating setbacks from COVID-19: Teachers and schools should not only support learners’ fundamental skill building, but also help them flourish emotionally and socially.
• Testing and scaling teacher and school-driven innovations: Individual teachers and schools are developing unique approaches to address the challenges they face, but more could be done to better understand which innovations should be adapted and adopted across a wider range of schools and contexts.

Knowledge and research

SALEX members generate and aggregate knowledge on these topics through a range of different mechanisms, including topic-specific challenge groups. These challenge groups exchange resources, experiences and lessons learned, generate new knowledge and global public goods, and amplify existing learning.

The Catalytic Funding mechanism is intended to support applied, collaborative research among two or more SALEX members, aligned to one or SALEX’s focus themes in the learning agenda. Catalytic Funding awards not only support learning in the contexts in which research is taking place, but also among the broader global education community. As a result, each winning consortium will develop a global public good which can be used by others to support schools or school leaders. In May 2023, the foundation selected the first four catalytic funding projects. 

Founding SALEX members

Council of International Schools

Educapaz

Education International

Fundacion Luker (Luker Foundation)

Global School Leaders (GSL)

Global Schools Forum

HundrEd

International Baccalaureate

Instituto Gesto

Kizazi

Lewa Digital Literacy Initiative

NetEdu

PAL Network

Research Schools International

Schools2030

TaRL Africa

Teach for All

UNICEF Data Must Speak

Youth Impact