GPE financing supports partner countries to transform their education system by aligning investments behind their priority education reforms.

These investments range from strengthening teacher training or data and evidence systems to constructing and renovating school infrastructure and distributing textbooks.

Measuring grant contributions to some of these education areas can be very straight forward, such as the overall cost of refurbishing a classroom, but how do we measure grant contribution to cross-cutting objectives such as gender equality?

Advancing gender equality in education usually means working through the different priorities required to transform an education system. For example, a country may integrate gender-responsive pedagogy as part of its reform to pre-service teacher training, using a grant to work on advancing both teacher training and gender equality as a result.

Disconnecting grant financing for gender equality from other education priorities is not only difficult as they often go hand in hand, but doing so also risks inaccurately capturing country efforts to give every girl and boy opportunities to learn.

As such, it is key to consider gender equality as a cross-cutting priority in education to appropriately measure its role in GPE grants.

Thanks to a new approach aligning GPE with the OECD Development Assistance Committee methodology to track development financing in support of gender equality and women’s rights, we now know there’s a positive direction for how GPE grants contribute to advancing gender equality in education across partner countries and which areas new grants need to focus on as they’re designed and implemented.

Measuring gender equality as a policy objective

GPE’s methodology for analyzing grant programs assesses the different degrees to which a specific activity within a program targets gender equality as a policy objective, building on the OECD’s gender policy marker approach.

The methodology helps GPE determine if grant activities:

• Are informed by relevant evidence
• Have a clear objective to advance gender equality
• Make a commitment to monitor results in gender equality.

There are 3 potential scores for each grant activity: gender equality “not targeted”; gender equality as a “significant” objective (in that it is one of multiple objectives); and gender equality as the “principal” objective.

For example, a back-to-school campaign may integrate specific messaging targeted at incentivizing parents to send girls back to school.

This activity would be scored as having gender equality as a “significant” objective since the activity’s design integrates approaches to ensure girls’ access is supported within its broader focus on access to education.

In contrast, an activity focused on teacher training to prevent gender-based violence would be scored as having gender equality as a “principal” objective since the activity (that is to say, the training) is implemented mainly to advance gender equality within and through education.

What we found

Using this methodology to score grant activities allows us to look at how the GPE grant budget is split based on a focus on gender equality.

And our analysis highlights a positive direction of travel: in 2024, there were 123 active GPE implementation grants totaling $3.4 billion and close to half of the grant budget ($1.6 billion) financed activities integrating gender equality as an objective (48%).

Activities integrating gender equality as a “significant” objective represent 33% of the grant volume associated with GPE grants while 15% of financing is for activities advancing gender equality as the “principal” objective.

The fact that a larger proportion of the grant budget had gender equality as a “significant” objective rather than a “principle” objective indicates that when partner countries use GPE financing to advance gender equality, they usually do so together with other education priorities such as mainstreaming gender equality as part of revising a national curriculum or constructing new schools.

Comparing grants across GPE operating models

The figure above also shows that there has been a significant increase in the proportion of the overall grant budget going to activities integrating gender equality as an objective in our current operating model GPE 2025.

Under GPE 2025, 66% of GPE grants are financing activities integrating gender equality as an objective and 86% of grants in partner countries with high levels of gender inequality allocate over 50% of their budget to activities integrating gender as an objective.

The proportion of the budget going to activities integrating gender equality as an objective in GPE 2025 grants stands at 68% compared to 34% in active grants from previous operating models.

This means grants developed under GPE 2025 have almost doubled the share of GPE’s grant budget financing gender equality initiatives compared to grants from our previous operating model GPE 2020.

A recently completed independent review sheds some light on the reasons behind this increase.

One is that partner countries have become more ambitious in how they integrate gender equality into policy discussions, notably in going beyond just parity (meaning equal numbers of girls and boys) in education access.

Another driver has been better use of evidence on gender equality. Finally, partner countries have been supported by a more structured grant review process from the Secretariat.

Putting findings into context

We also included Gender Inequality Index values in our analysis to get a better sense of the country context in which GPE grants are active.

The Gender Inequality Index developed by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) looks at the level of gender inequality across various social dimensions, including education. Lower index values indicate less inequality between women and men.

When comparing the proportion of GPE grant amount addressing gender equality as an objective and the grant country’s Gender Inequality Index value, we find GPE grants in partner countries with higher levels of gender inequality still allocate a significant portion of the grant to gender equality:

Out of 16 grants in partner countries with high levels of gender inequality (determined by having a Gender Inequality Index value above 0.5), 13 grants (or 81%) dedicate over 50% of their grant budget to activities which integrate advancing gender equality as an objective (as indicated by the green-shared area in the figure above).

However, there are a few exceptions (as we can see in the bottom right section of that same figure) where partner countries experience high gender inequality and dedicate a low proportion of grant financing to gender equality as an objective.

An analysis of these 3 “outlier” grants in sub-Saharan Africa shows areas of opportunity to be more systematic in our approach to supporting partner countries to promote gender equality in education:

• Integrating better responses to the barriers to education faced by boys
• Being more mindful of differences by gender in learning achievement levels (particularly where there are no gaps in access)
• Assessing to what degree education can help tackle harmful gender norms in society such as by addressing gender stereotypes.

A positive direction of travel

The grant analysis methodology described here emphasizes the value of integrating the cross-cutting nature of gender equality into how we measure the overall contribution of GPE grants to advancing gender equality.

While areas of progress remain, there is a clear positive direction of travel for GPE in terms of reflecting gender equality as a priority in its financing instruments.

GPE’s approach is a valuable mechanism to advancing gender equality in access to, within and through education. As we look to the next strategic plan GPE 2030, it is key the partnership continues to work to ensure our financing reflects this commitment.