Education

Despite impressive progress towards this Sustainable Development Goal, many millions remain out of school and, in school, many social inequalities negatively impact learning. This can limit opportunities for girls, children from poorer families, children with disabilities, and marginalised ethnic and language groups. We seek to improve the access of all children to school, inclusiveness of education in school, and the participation of marginalised people in education policy and processes.

To raise learning levels and prepare students for today’s fast-changing world, most countries need radical and rapid transformation of their education systems. Our education portfolio is one of OPM’s oldest and largest teams. It helps governments in low- and middle-income countries deliver high quality learning opportunities for all on a sustainable basis by working in the following technical areas:

• Transforming education systems to ensure learning keeps pace with a changing world, including managing ‘Research on Improving Systems of Education’ (RISE);
• Developing education assessments and metrics to better measure teaching and learning, including for our many complex impact evaluations of education programmes in Nigeria, Tanzania and elsewhere.
• Improving education financing to ensure education resources are appropriate, efficient, effective and equitable, including delivering training on public finance for children;
• Supporting governments in harnessing non-state actors in education and reforming early childhood development to ensure children are well prepared for later life, including a systematic review of what interventions work; and
• Improving education equality to ensure no children are left behind, including building evidence on out of school children in the MENA and East Asia and the Pacific regions.

We believe effective consulting requires deep knowledge of the political, economic, social and educational contexts in which we work, and we orient our teams and projects to achieve this. We work directly with ministries of education and donors, but also contribute to the academic debate. We engage long-term on countries and issues to ensure that we contribute to sustainable capacity for effective education.

Our experts recently presented on a range of topics at the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) Annual Meeting. Click here for the complete list of all sessions.