Learning Partners
Education Out Loud engages regional and global learning partners to work on strategic themes and support capacity development across the civil society organisations. They facilitate training and learning collaboratives on various topics for learning from experience and peer learning among grantees.
Global Learning Partners
The Global Learning Partners work on strategic research themes across the entire portfolio of grantees. They work to ensure that research-based findings contribute to the sharing of EOL-related learning as global public goods.
Global Learning Partners collaborate with a selection of Education Out Loud grantees and analyse and aggregate experiences and best practices, distilling knowledge to be used by the grantees and Education Out Loud to improve work and programme implementation. The Global Learning Partners’ initiatives are also meant to benefit the wider community of education stakeholders with insights and knowledge on advocacy, policy influencing, and accountability, among other themes.
The current Global Learning Partners are engaged with Education Out Loud from August 2024 until the middle of 2026. The current and former Global Learning Partners are:
University of Sussex, United Kingdom
IDS is a leading global institution for research, teaching and learning, impact and communications. IDS works with partners such as governments, foundations, NGOs, academics and civil society to transform approaches to progressive social, political and economic change in ways that ultimately make a difference to people’s lives. IDS’ mission is to deliver world-class research, learning and teaching that transforms the knowledge, action and leadership needed for more equitable and sustainable development globally.
IDS was part of the first cohort of Global Learning Partners. In this period, they focused on three areas of work: Learning accompaniment, advocacy in challenging contexts and gender and inclusion. Examples of their learning products can be found here.
In the current phase, IDS is focusing on the following areas of work: Adaptive management; social inclusion; and advocacy and accountability.
Slough, United Kingdom
NFER is a leading independent provider of education research and insights in the UK. NFER’s mission is to improve educational outcomes for future generations everywhere, by creating and sharing high-quality, independent evidence-based research to inform policymakers, practitioners, and other key decision-makers to support positive changes in education systems. NFER’s work includes conducting assessments, providing analysis, and producing publications that inform and influence educational practices and policies.
As a Global Learning Partner, NFER is focusing on three areas of work: Gender equality; social inclusion; and fragile and conflict-affected settings.
United Kingdom & France
RTE is a global accountability initiative with a vision of ensuring that all people, regardless of their status and circumstances, enjoy their right to quality education. RTE empowers civil society actors and networks to carry out evidence-based research focusing on issues such as the right to free, quality education, education financing, and education for marginalized groups. The Right to Education Initiative monitors and reports on the progress towards fulfilling the right to education and provides tools and resources to support civil society advocacy efforts.
As a Global Learning Partner, RTE is focusing on three areas of work: Advocacy and social accountability; gender equality; and social inclusion.
Twin Cities Campus, Minnesota, United States
UMN is one of the top public research universities in the United States, addressing some of the most complex challenges facing society today. UMN take on high quality research across various fields aimed at addressing community problems and has a number of resources to support research activities and dissemination of knowledge, such as expertise from around the world, involving their vast network of graduate students. UMN is committed to a decolonial, relational and intersectional approach to gender equality and social inclusion in education, which are key thematics in the work of UMN.
As a Global Learning Partner, UMN is focusing on thematic areas of gender equality and social inclusion, as well as developing a facilitated reflexive and multi-modal exchange (FRAME) approach to carry out analysis of EOL’s impact.
MDF Training and Consulting (MDF) & Australian Council for Education Research (ACER).
You can find examples of Learning Activities, Products and Tools produced by the Global Learning Partners here.
Regional Learning Partners
Regional learning parnters
- Peer organisations, organisational development practitioners, research institutions or consultants that support learning among grantees.
- Proven experience in relevant thematic, advocacy or organisational areas of learning.
- Grounding in the global south and knowledge of grantees’ context.
- Legitimacy – shared values, rightsbased approach to civil society participation and education. Experience and methodological capacity in facilitating learning processes in organisations.
- Capacity to work with a gender transformative approach.
- Ability to engage grantees in action research or collate experience across the EOL portfolio.
EOL engages Regional Learning Partners with specific context-relevant knowledge and experience and language competences of grantees in each of the regions of EOL.
Regional learning partners are identified and pre-qualified by the four respective EOL Regional Management Units via a pre-qualification process in an open call for expression of interest (EOI).
Support from regional learning partners targets different types of needs or strategic priority areas as reflected in the EOL Regional Learning Plans. Regional Learning Partners strengthen capacities of civil society actors/grantees by tailored support such as:
- Targeted capacity building
- Mentoring/coaching for grantees
- Facilitation of Learning Collaboratives (see below)
- Facilitation of experience exchange/peer learning
- Supporting learning in the organisations
- Supporting setting up adaptive management systems
- Distilling learning and documenting and sharing lessons learnt
EOL draws up a Term of Reference for the various learning efforts planned for and send out to two or three prequalified learning partners with the relevant expertise. If they are interested in the assignment, they will then submit a proposal with ideas, approach, methodologies, and budget. EOL intends to ensure relationship building and more profound knowledge of grantees’ capacities by using the same learning partner for the same group of grantees for a longer period. They can also be hired as mentors for a particular grantee after a joint training of a group of grantees.