COVID19 Learning Recovery and the Potential of Scale

The pandemic has negatively affected the learning and well-being of 95% of school children across the world, exacerbating the learning crisis that already existed in many parts of the world. Many children will now never reach expected levels for literacy, mathematics and socio-emotional skills, and many will not return to school. The worst affected are lower income households and vulnerable groups, including girls and children in rural locations.

Solving a problem of this size requires both innovation and scale – so it is important that the role that non–state education can play across wider education systems is not overlooked. As the latest Global Education Monitoring Report highlights, non-state organisations are important drivers of innovation, yet they don’t always have the incentive to work in partnership with government and other scale partners. Governments, too, “need fresh ideas in education and should bring together those who can develop them”. They can achieve this by training education officers to identify and develop innovations; by testing, evidencing and scaling up successful practices; and by enabling practitioners to exchange experiences.

Global Schools Forum is in a unique position to help drive this change. We have built a network of 66 education organisations, spanning 51 countries across 4 continents. Many of them have been at the forefront of COVID-19 response in their countries, and over 50% of them already work in partnership with government across the world. Their collective expertise has inspired us to build the Impact at Scale Labs. The Labs aim to work with innovators and governments across the world to promote trust and nurture innovation that truly aspires to affect large-scale change.

The Labs will:

• prepare education organisations and governments to scale innovations with funding, and guidance from education experts and practitioners
• systematically collect evidence on innovation effectiveness and the innovation process; and
• share learnings with GSFs wide community of practitioners, policymakers, and funders to support replication where appropriate.

Our model has been informed by an understanding of key ingredients for achieving scale in education innovation:

• Scale impact, not a specific solution. Approach scaling as responding to a deeply perceived need in a given context, rather than leading with a predetermined solution and then “searching” for a problem to solve.
• Make funding and support for scaling as flexible as possible. Education innovations will reach a “valley of death” and often fail before achieving scale because of a lack of flexible funding support and guidance.
• Work with government. Align innovations with government priorities, communicate through the system, and enlist government counterparts in the delivery of the program.
• Invest in evidence. Test and document as many elements as possible in the pilot, leveraging data to provide feedback into the scaled design, and measure and be sensitive to costs – to avoid altering behaviours using financial resources that aren’t sustainable.

We are delighted to launch our call for applications today, and very much looking forward to working with the first cohort of our Impact at Scale Labs to share our unique blend of innovation, peer-to-peer learning and policy impact in education.