Learning Partners

Global Learning Partners

The Global Learning Partners work on strategic research themes across the entire portfolio of EOL 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 EOL grantees and analyse and aggregate experiences and best practices, distilling knowledge to be used by the grantees and EOL 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 EOL from August 2024 until the middle of 2026. The current Global Learning Partners are:

Institute of Development Studies (IDS)

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.

National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER)

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.

Right to Education Initiative (RTE)

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.

University of Minnesota (UMN)

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.

The first cohort of Global Learning Partners was engaged with EOL from 2022 until the middle of 2024. The first Global Learning Partners were:

Accountability Research Center (ARC),
Institute of Development Studies (IDS),
International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP),
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

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.

Learning Collaboratives

Learning collaboratives are groups of grantees coming together to learn from experiences of one another around a specific thematic topic, or organisational or advocacy areas of learning. EOL currently supports 28 Learning collaboratives in the four regions of EOL operation. They can be very different in form and ways of working and being a mix between online work and physical meetings. Depending on topics and dynamics, the collaboratives run between 3 months to a year with a mix of physical workshops and online sessions for sharing and learning. Regional coalitions or Learning partners are engaged by EOL to facilitate the learning collaboratives.

Currently, the following learning collaboratives are active:

West & Central Africa

ReLus Learning collaborative:Participants include NECs from all the five Portuguese-speaking NECs in the EOL portfolio (Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Timor L’este (Asia Pacific)), and three outside EOL financed coalitions (São Tomé e Príncipe, Brazil, Portugal). Learning cycles focus on a) advocacy strategies for fulfilment of SDG 4; and b) institutional strengthening/movement building within the NECs. Read more here.
Environmental Education: NECs from Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Senegal, and Togo participate. Facilitated by the National Education Coalition of France. Focus on sharing and documenting existing good practices of Environmental Education and Sustainable Development (EESD) for actors in education. Published a fact sheet on Education and Environmental Challenges.
Learning Collaborative on Education in Fragile contexts: OC1, 2 and 3 grantees of Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Mali, Togo, Benin, Cameroon. Focus on identifying, documenting, and sharing best practices in terms of promising approaches and experiences for influencing educational and socio-professional reintegration of children and young people in emergencies situation.

Horn, Eastern & Southern Africa

The Africa Education and Learning platform constitutes a steering structure for all 24 grantees covered by the RMU HESA. Under this, there are seven thematic learning collaboratives lead by different grantees, although these are currently not up and running. However, a sharing platform for the learning collaborative is running, providing opportunities for regional learning: The Africa Education and Learning hub.
Malawi National Learning collaborative: OC1 and 3 grantees/alliance members in Malawi, facilitated by the NEC. Includes some non EOL grantees like Save the children and District Education Network representatives from the districts. Focus on joint coordination on advocacy in the country.
ACEA Learning Collaborative with participation of 11 NECs in the MENA region, including Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Egypt and Afghanistan. Focus is on the five tracks of transformative education with the purpose to strengthen the capacity of CSOs in Arab countries education sector to advocate for transformative education. During the period the academy focused on two learning areas i.e., Policy Analysis & Dialogue and Attitude and Transformative Education & Social accountability mechanism, where the sessions focused on discussing educational mechanisms which are compatible with the SDG4. The participants are currently preparing an Arab regional report on protecting the right to education, the report will be an important reference for the coalitions in Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, and Egypt to prepare reports parallel to Voluntary National Review report of their governments.

Latin America & the Carribean

CLADE (Latin American Campaign for the Right to Education) Sub-regional advocacy agenda, Central America: NECs from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica are having this space to create an influencing subregional agenda for the accomplishment of the human right to education for marginalized groups and migrants.
CLADE Youth Working Group: NECs from Bolivia, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras. To build a formal youth space within CLADE. The purpose is to strengthen the participation of young people in CLADE and CLADE members.
CLADE Communication Working Group: NECs from Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Bolivia. To identify the communication activities developed by CLADE members; reflect on how to strengthen communication actions; develop joint strategic actions; and share learning.

Asia & the Pacific

ASPBAE (Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education) Learning collaborative on gender responsive sector plans: with participation of NECs in Asia Pacific Region (12 OC1 grantees). Focus on enhancing capacity on understanding, how to analyse, and advocate for gender responsive national education sector plans (ESPs).
ASPBAE Learning collaborative on youth engagement: Focus on NECs sharing learning on how to better engage marginalised youth, build the youth constituencies of coalitions, and build capacities of youth for advocacy and campaigning on the right to education at national, regional and international platforms and processes.
ASPBAE Learning collaborative on evidenced based advocacy: To strengthen the advocacy agenda and contribute to the credibility of the proposed advocacy agenda, especially through participating in and reflecting on a data collecting / research activity.
ASBAE Learning Collaborative on engagement in LEG: Focus on strengthening coalition engagement and advocacy in the LEGs and other key policy processes.
ASBAE Learning Collaborative on financing education for youth: Focus on national budget analysis and advocacy. Sharing learning on tax justice and advocacy positions to expand their resource base and learning about the impact of Ed-tech and privatization.
ASPBAE Learning collaborative on sustainability: Focus on resource mobilization with the aim of supporting the NECs with their sustainability plan and exploring resources for sustaining advocacy efforts.

Global Campaign for Education Learning Communities

These are open to all NECs globally. There is however not reporting from GCE of how many are participating.

Education in Emergencies (EiE) Learning Community: GCE revised the EiE learning community ToR and integrated new mechanisms to strengthen and promote the Learning Community. Some of the new innovations introduced include monitoring the membership and rolling out a membership registration process, setting up EiE Learning Community online page on the Learning Hub with the dedicated community email address: eie@gcelearning.org.
Education Financing (EdFin) Learning Community: Collaborating and taking joint actions in responding to education financing thematic issues of concern.
Inclusive Education and Early Childhood (IEEC) Learning Community: Focus on collaborating and taking joint actions in responding to inclusive education and early childhood thematic issues of concern.
Gender Learning Community: Focus on collaborating and taking joint actions in responding to gender thematic issues of concern.