High-impact enterprises are important drivers of change in education. They often identify unmet needs of students or teachers or reveal insufficient, low-quality services of existing providers. They provide technology-enabled solutions, for example mobile phone-based learning or artificial intelligence assistance. Such solutions have a huge potential for reaching vulnerable and underserved groups such as rural youth or refugees. Launched in late 2021, ILFE is connecting high-impact enterprises and other market-based social organizations with reliable and suitable financing instruments.

ILFE is part of the Impact-Linked Finance Fund, which provides finance to high-impact enterprises, offering them direct rewards for achieving positive outcomes. The Impact-Linked Finance Fund also has funds supporting Gender in Fintech and a regional fund for Eastern and Southern Africa.

We hope that contributing to the Fund will help address inequalities in education which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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The report discusses how learning and teaching must change if they are to keep pace with a fast-changing world and how progress in education is not possible without a deep understanding of learning processes, places and technologies, and an accurate understanding of policy-making and implementation – from preschool to parliament.

It describes how our Research Agenda aims to lay the foundation for this evidence-based transformation of education systems, which will provide young people with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and equitable opportunities they need to reach their learning potential and thrive.

By fostering and supporting positive forces in research and education, we can link evidence to action, and action to systems around the world.

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Even though the use of EdTech has grown rapidly over the past 10-15 years, only a small proportion of EdTech innovations are evaluated for their impact or effectiveness. Evaluation data are generally unavailable to the public, and only a fraction of EdTech companies conduct randomized control trials that are typical in most other industrial sectors. As a result, many EdTech innovations are supplied to schools without any analysis of whether they meet children’s needs. Ineffective and potentially even detrimental technologies are reaching the classroom.

Through LEIF we support EdTech companies to use evidence early on in product development. We also encourage researchers and academics to embrace the new possibilities of evaluating children’s progress offered by technology. We have committed CHF 40 million to encourage more evidence use in EdTech. About CHF 30 million of that is invested in venture capital firms committed to applying research standards to their funding decisions. We also help portfolio companies to meet evidence standards. We are currently working with eight venture capital funds: Brighteye Ventures, Educapital, Learn Capital, New Markets Venture Partners, Reach Capital, Rethink Education, Sparkmind.vc and Owl Ventures. These funds reach over 160 companies across the EdTech sector.

With the other CHF 10 million we are encouraging collaboration between researchers and EdTech companies through the Connecting the EdTech Research Ecosystem (CERES) network. CERES brings together global leaders in computer science, psychology, neuroscience, education, and the EdTech industry to tailor digital learning technologies more effectively to children. The network also addresses growing inequalities in access to digital learning opportunities and trains the next generation of researchers in multiple disciplines across academia and industry. Through the Education Foundations Investing in Systems Transformation (EdFirst) initiative, we convened over 20 foundations and impact investors who are together promoting evidence in EdTech through investments in venture capital funds.

We aim to bridge the divide between science and industry, ensuring that robust evidence drives the development, use, and evaluation of EdTech. We want to ensure that effective use of evidence and data become a priority in EdTech investment decisions. We hope to inform philanthropic and public policy decisions to promote the creation of investment standards that make better use of EdTech data.

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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

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The Jacobs Foundation has partnered with NORRAG, the Geneva Graduate Institute, and Unesco International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) to offer an Executive Education course on Innovative Financing for Education.

A Certificate of Advance Studies will be issued by the Geneva Graduate Institute, and five scholarships are available through the Jacobs Foundation. Innovative financing is gaining attention to support more and better financing in education, as highlighted at the United Nations’ Transforming Education Summit. Innovative financing aims to use creative financing structures or arrangements to facilitate the movement of funds from sources interested in giving funds for a particular purpose to domains or sectors that need funds to carry on their activities.

The course will be delivered fully online from 3 March 2023 to 30 June 2023. It aims to increase the knowledge and capacity of education and finance sector professionals working towards the realization of SDG4 and SDG17. Participants will build their understanding of the opportunities and challenges posed by innovative financing mechanisms for education, and develop skills in examining the potential benefits and challenges in designing and implementing innovative financing mechanisms within the education sector.

Apply early to be considered for a scholarship here: https://www.graduateinstitute.ch/ife

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The Jacobs Foundation has partnered with Teach For All to support the work of the Global Learning Lab and accelerate the shift to classrooms where students’ diverse needs, contexts, strengths and aspirations are central to the teaching and learning approach. As part of this work, the Global Learning Lab, together with network partners, will strengthen its evidence-to-practice approach through programmatic improvement research to iteratively test, evolve, and scale resources and insights on learner-centered teaching and learning.

The Jacobs Foundation’s support will enable Teach For All to increase its programmatic improvement research capacity, develop and refine its approach and methodologies, pilot the approach collectively with network partners, and adapt the approach based on the outcomes of the pilots.

Learn more about how the partnership will further the work of the Global Learning Lab and help Teach For All expand and evolve its approach to research.

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Data Must Speak research sheds light on untapped existing practices and behaviors of grassroots-level stakeholders – for example, teachers, head-teachers, and communities – who are important change agents in education.

“Empowering our partners in-country to identify local positive deviance schools in an evidence-based manner, replicate and share them with peers is a truly new way of addressing the learning crisis through global education initiatives,” said Nora Marketos, Jacobs Foundation Learning Schools Co-Lead.

The research further leverages the positive deviance framework in conjunction with innovative research methodologies such as behavioral insights, implementation research, and scaling science to provide evidence-based answers for every child.

First reports with relevant findings will be published mid-year 2022. Find out more about Data Must Speak here.

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The Formative Assessment: Improving Learning for Every Child Spotlight aims to identify 10-15 impactful and scalable education innovations that promote the systematic use of formative assessments to inform teaching and learning. In total, 129 innovators from 42 countries submitted their innovation to this Spotlight.

The Research Process was particularly rigorous. In order to evaluate the validity of submissions, applicants were asked to submit additional information regarding how, specifically, their innovation integrates formative assessment into students’ learning journey.

Find out who made the list and how they are working to create a better Future of Assessment: https://bit.ly/3KoQaDs

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High-impact enterprises are important drivers of change. These enterprises often identify unmet needs of students or teachers or lay open insufficient, low-quality services of existing providers. Technology-enabled solutions, for example mobile-phone-based learning or artificial intelligence assistance, have huge potential for reaching vulnerable and underserved groups such as rural youth or refugees. The new Fund would connect high-impact enterprises and other market-based social organizations with reliable and suitable finance.

As a Foundation dedicated to transforming learning and education around the world, contributing to the Fund will help address education inequalities. Despite strong progress over the past decades, ensuring an inclusive, quality education (SDG 4) to vulnerable children and youth across the globe is far from reality. The economic and social crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic aggravated this alarming gap, with the risk of further increasing the already high financial disparities in the future.

Impact-Linked Finance Fund
iGravity

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