Spotlight – Ground-up partnership models for scaling FLN impact

Spotlight - Ground-up partnership models for scaling FLN impact

Welcome to a Global Schools Forum Spotlight bringing together three organisations from the GSF community — Duara Education (Kenya), Axium Education (South Africa) and Pratham International — to share what community-rooted partnership models look like in practice, and how they are being used to scale foundational literacy and numeracy beyond government alone.

Government partnerships remain a primary route for scaling foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) interventions. Yet across the Global South, non-state organisations are increasingly demonstrating that community-embedded partnerships can offer complementary, and sometimes more lasting, pathways to scale. From local women entrepreneurs running micro-schools, to community youth and peer organisations strengthening teaching and learning, programme design and delivery is being reimagined through partnerships that extend reach, deepen local ownership, and improve the quality of learning for millions of children.

This Spotlight brings together three organisations from the GSF community at different stages of scaling through partnerships. Each will share what their model looks like in practice, what enables or constrains it, and the principles and non-negotiables that underpin its ability to scale.

Together, the three perspectives will explore four guiding questions:

• What does it take to build lasting partnerships with communities, and how do organisations balance building local capacities with bringing in flexibility and adaptation to context?
• How is quality and fidelity of FLN approaches maintained when working through local communities and youth leaders?
• How do organisations decide when to scale through direct delivery versus through partners and community members, and what role do non-state organisations play as technical anchors when others take on implementation?
• What funding and incentive structures enable, or constrain, these kinds of partnerships?

The session is intended to spark dialogue within and beyond the GSF community on what “partnering for scale” can mean beyond government alone. We welcome practitioners, researchers, funders and policy actors working on foundational learning across the Global South to join us.