Center for Education Innovation launches Hub in East Africa

Sometimes it’s a good thing to be the least interesting people in a room.  That’s how we felt recently, walking through the atrium of Strathmore Business School in Nairobi, a room filled with innovators, policy makers and researchers actively engaged in finding solutions for Kenya’s education challenges. Meeting for the launch of the Center for Education Innovations (CEI), a new global initiative, these change makers quickly brought the education debate back home, which was precisely the point.

Established by Results for Development (R4D) with support from the UK Department for International Development (DFID), CEI seeks to identify, analyze and connect the plethora of promising non-state innovations working to improve the quality of education for the poor. The idea is to fill the gap on what is known (or more importantly not known) about this growing phenomenon of non-state education for the poor, hoping to promote uptake of successful models, foster partnerships with governments, funders and educators to reach pragmatic solutions to tough education challenges.

CEI comes at a crucial time. Non-state education solutions are increasingly playing a larger role worldwide. According to the database of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, global private school enrollment is nearly 14% for primary and 22% for secondary school learners. In Kenya, that number is at 11% and 12% respectively, and likely to rise in the future. As we look towards a post-2015 global education agenda, we need to have a better understanding of these institutions and their results, whose models can inform broader efforts by governments and policymakers. By throwing away labels such as “public” and “private,” CEI can focus on connecting those who can best serve the world’s poor and bridge institutional gaps to progress towards getting more children in school and learning.

A room full of experts with innovative ideas that work

In Kenya, CEI’s East Africa Hub has identified some groundbreaking innovations, covering a wide range of approaches and providing a variety of educational services to those in need. Many of these were represented at the Nairobi launch event, and spoke enthusiastically about their respective models during an informal networking session, linking up with fellow innovators and government officials to share their ideas about how best to serve Kenya’s students.

Bridge International Academies, represented by co-founders Jay Kimmelman and Shannon May, described their work setting up thousands of affordable private schools all over Kenya, using a carefully designed curriculum to increase learning outcomes. Meanwhile, Eneza Education described their efforts to support students outside the classroom by bringing the national curriculum to the palm of their hands through an SMS based software that provides quizzes and study tools to learners on their mobile phones. Taking advantage of technology, the organization provides a very practical and affordable way for students to reinforce their classroom learning, and even enables teachers to track learner’s progress. On the learning front, Uwezo elaborated on using an innovative citizen led assessment to gauge how much kids are learning, informing policy makers and the community about what needs to be improved in the overall education system.

Partnerships are important

Crucial to the impact of this launch event was the participation of Kenya’s Ministry of Education. Represented by the Assistant Director Apollo Apuko, the Ministry illustrated the importance of identifying and analyzing Kenya’s non-state innovators, opening doors for collaboration (not competition!) with government. His keynote speech served as invitation for partnership, and an important example to policy makers around the world.

Seeing these “public” and “private” change makers interact in the same room really brought things into perspective as we continue to shape CEI.

What’s needed in education today, is not a top-down systematic approach, but instead a bottom-up focus on understanding of what’s working, and why it’s working, with a focus on results, and contextually relevant solutions. That’s what we strive for.

Though CEI’s global effort and online platform are coordinated from Washington D.C., it is clear that the most exciting interactions are occurring at the local level, through regional Hub teams. So far, these exist in East Africa, South Africa and India. As these Hubs strive to identify and connect innovators and policy makers at the country level our role will be to extract lessons and results to form a broader understanding of the non-state sector, and connect innovators and policy makers at a global level.

Much like in Nairobi, our plan is to provide a space for connection, and let practitioners speak for themselves. We have much to learn from them.