Explore further: GRA Process and Management FAQs

The Board of Directors gave this mandate on November 2010. The GRA program is part of the new Global Partnership for Education Fund, which is now the new financing mechanism of the Global Partnership for Education.

In November 2010, in Madrid, the Board of Directors approved the 3 thematic areas for the GRA for a three-year cycle (2011-2013):

• learning outcomes
• out-of-school children
• and education financing

A new cycle with new thematic areas will identified and discussed in 2014. Key decisions in Madrid

Both the GRA 3 thematic areas and the strategy papers are closely aligned and partially overlap. The strategic papers identify critical challenges the Global Partnership for Education needs to address in order to achieve its objectives. The GRA program will support the implementation of those strategic areas by financing activities to disseminate best practices and fill knowledge gaps common to the Global Partnership for Education developing countries.

Only official bodies such as bilateral donor agencies or multilateral technical or financial agencies who are affiliated with the Global Partnership for Education Single Fund can apply for funding. Different Global Partnership for Education partners can cooperate to prepare and implement a specific GRA activity.

For example, a bilateral donor may develop a proposal with an NGO, a research center, and developing country partners. However, the bilateral donor will be responsible for the implementation of the GRA activity and become the Supervising Entity (SE). The Global Partnership for Education Secretariat will negotiate transfer agreements for GRA implementation.

First allocations are anticipated to start in November 2011. Activities will be funded for two years. SEs can involve actors such as NGOs, countries, etc., as implementing any aspect of the GRA, following their customary procedures.

The Global Partnership for Education Secretariat will not implement the bulk of the work. Instead, Supervising Entities (SE) comprising of official multilateral or bilateral agencies will be identified based on the relevance of their proposals. However, if an RRPs has been left unanswered, the Secretariat may feel it is morally compelling to catalyze, while at the same time working with sister institutions to induce take-over as soon as possible.

There is no intent to make agencies compete as in a contracting or procurement process. On the other hand, RRPs or Terms of Reference (TOR) will help all parties stay focus on results and ensure that everyone's expectations are clear. All ideas and proposals will be subject External Quality Review (EQR).

Evaluation groups or panels will work on a set of objectives and transparent criteria, which will guarantee that funds are being allocated according to the level of quality and merit of proposals. These criteria include:

• Country ownership
• Existing programs in which there is already good investment and return to investment, potential to affect large numbers of children,
• Other similar logical criteria.

In Madrid in November 2010, the Board decided that country-based activity should remain separate from global and regional activities. Thus, there would not be a separate PACE. Activities eligible for funding under the Global Partnership for Education Fund include all eligible activities previously funded under the Global Partnership for Education Catalytic Funds, the EPDF, and the Secretariat Trust Fund, as well as activities identified in the PACE Conceptual Design document.

The GRA stakeholder consultation is open to all the Global Partnership for Education constituency representatives. The Global Partnership for Education Secretariat sent an informational email to all constituency representatives asking them to nominate 1-3 technical experts from their institutions or constituency, to comment on the thematic papers according to their expertise. We also approached other stakeholders, like OECD, IIEP, UIS, etc., to participate. The whole consultation has been open: any organization can comment on each the thematic papers. Results are all posted on our GRA webpage

The themes were already pre-approved by the Board. As to the details, instead of hiring external consultants (which has itself been criticized by some commentators), the Global Partnership for Education Secretariat decided to use its own staff of knowledgeable experts to draft the papers. In any case, no paper is meant to be an exhaustive body of research on each of the thematic areas, but rather a non-academic statement that identifies knowledge and practice gaps within the three thematic areas.

As we see it, and as recommended in the Mid Term Evaluation, the Partnership needs to continue to put increasing attention on results. The M&E framework will signal which results are important and ought to be measured. The GRA process will produce and/or share the knowledge useful to all partners in order to enable everyone to deliver on the results that will be monitored.