Developing Education Strategies and Programs

Providing all children with a good education requires major cooperation and resources. Our role is to coordinate all education actors and create education strategies and programs to deliver education results.

Our mission is to make it possible for all children, including the poorest and most marginalized, to attend school and receive a quality education. We help developing countries address barriers faced by out-of-school children, helping them to build safe and accessible schools where they can learn and reach their potential.

Our innovative approach aims to empower developing countries so they can assess their education priorities and better invest in the future of their children. This is no easy task.

Giving a quality education to the millions of remaining unschooled children requires building a solid strategic foundation supported by adequate financing and resources.

This is where we step in…

Building a team and a plan

Many developing countries already allocate portions of their budgets to education and may receive additional support from developed countries or multilateral agencies. Our goal is not displace these existing financing and aid mechanisms but to improve upon them to maximize education results.

Our role is to bring all education partners to one table and promote mutual collaboration toward the common goal of delivering a good education to all girls and boys.

The Global Partnership Secretariat works closely with national governments and their development partners (donors, multilateral agencies, civil society, private sector and foundations) to develop an education plan that maps out the best strategies and programs to get all children into school and learning.

Team work is the foundation of our work. Developing country governments lead the whole process and for many of them, particularly those facing or emerging from conflict, this collaborative approach is highly beneficial as it concentrates efforts and funds on a common set of priorities.

Providing support and funding

Only developing countries which can demonstrate this kind of collaborative commitment can access funding and resources from the Global Partnership. Once finalized, development partners endorse the education plan and the country becomes a GPE partner. This opens the door to the partnership’s considerable financial and technical resources and sends a strong signal of that country’s commitment to education

We provide technical feedback to developing partners to help them develop specific education programs and identify key issues to be monitored to achieve education results.

We also ensure that all developing country partners with a quality education plan have sufficient and sustainable resources to successfully deliver quality education for all children. Therefore, we provide funding through four 3-year grants: Education Plan Development Grant, Program Development Grant, Program Implementation Grant, and Global and Regional Activities program.

We support the grant application process, facilitate knowledge sharing among country partners, and monitor the impact of education programs .

Achieving results together

Our technical and financial support has helped bring millions of girls and boys into schools, build tens of thousands of classrooms, train hundreds of thousands of teachers, and provide hundreds of millions of textbooks.

In 2009 over 82 million children were enrolled in school in GPE developing country partners compared to 63 million in 2002. The Global Partnership for Education has helped put 23 million more children into school.

In 2009 more than 68% of girls completed the last grade of primary school in GPE developing country partners around the world compared to 56% in 2002. This increase in completion will help save the lives of approximately 350,000 children under the age of 5.