Earlier this month, Alice Albright, the Chief Executive Officer of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), and Jean Lebel, the President of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), announced the launch of the GPE Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX). A joint endeavor between GPE and IDRC, KIX is a response to five key factors that hinder improved education outcomes: limited knowledge about what works in education system reform; the challenges of scaling educational innovations; the need for nationally relevant responses to education system challenges; the limited use of evidence in policy planning and implementation; and the limited investment in knowledge sharing.
KIX will help make national education systems stronger and accelerate education progress in the global South. It will do so by supporting knowledge exchange across countries and by funding knowledge and innovation at global and regional levels. KIX aims to find, fund and support the scaling of proven responses to key educational challenges identified by partner countries, and ensure these approaches feed into national education sector policy planning and implementation processes.
We are excited to announce that KIX has just launched its first major call for global grants that aims at strengthening education systems with proven innovations.
Scaling proven innovations
KIX global grants will support projects that develop, test, and apply ways to scale proven innovations in areas that are core to improve the performance of education systems. We know, that many education innovations work in terms of improving learning outcomes, enhancing equity in education access, and improving efficiency and cost effectiveness in education systems. But we also know that many education innovations remain disconnected from and not integrated with national systems.
Relatively little is known about innovations with a proven impact that can be scaled within context, adapted and possibly transferred across multiple contexts. More specifically, while evidence on scaling and education exists, it is frequently on expanding access to education and not improving learning outcomes. Real progress in education requires a better understanding of scaling processes that achieve impact in access, quality, equity and efficiency together.