Bilateral and multilateral partners are critical to the Global Partnership for Education. GPE relies on this diverse group of partners for funding, governance, technical collaboration and support to sector coordination and grant delivery at country level. Bilateral and multilateral partners also provide essential financial and technical support to GPE partner countries through their own channels.

Bilateral and multilateral partners participate actively in guiding GPE's development through participation in GPE's Board and governance committees. As such, they are co-owners of GPE alongside other constituency groups.

In addition to financing education sector strategies and programs, GPE aims to leverage harmonized and aligned partner support to strengthen data and analysis, promote inclusive and evidence-based policy making, and consolidate efforts to build partner countries' capacity for strengthened education systems.