How Education Out loud works
Education Out Loud works with civil society organizations in more than 60 countries, funding activities across 5 areas:
- Policy dialogue: Participation of civil society in education planning and policy dialogue.
- Public engagement: Social mobilization, communications and campaigns supporting education.
- Data and transparency: Development of tools for accountability and tracking of public education budgets and program implementation.
- Analysis: Research on education challenges and policy implementation
- Strengthening civic capacity: Capacity support and peer learning for education civil society and advocacy groups.
Components and grants
Education Out Loud provides grants under three components. The grants are being implemented until December 2026. The list of grants and related information is available on Education Out Loud website and country pages of this website.
Component 1: Aims to strengthen national civil society engagement in education planning, policy dialogue and monitoring.
- Grant size: up to US$137,000 per year.
Component 2: Aims to strengthen civil society roles in promoting the transparency and accountability of national education sector policy and implementation.
- Grant size: up to US$250,000 per year.
Component 3: Aims to create a stronger global and transnational enabling environment for national civil society advocacy and transparency efforts.
- Grant size: up to US$320,000 per year.
Learning agenda
Education Out Loud invests heavily in learning by and from its partners, helping to enhance their institutional and advocacy effectiveness and improving the support it provides.
Ongoing learning support: Education Out Loud grantees benefit from continuous learning opportunities through webinars and community of practice. Each grantee has a learning plan to guide the capacity support and learning opportunities over the lifetime of the grant. The learning goals are established by grantees themselves at the start of the grant and are supported by global and regional learning partners – organizations with expertise, training approaches and mentoring skills.
Distilling knowledge: Strategic research is being conducted by 4 renowned research organizations (Accountability Research Center, Institute of Development Studies at University of Sussex, UNESCO’s International Institute for Education Planning and a consortium of Management for Development Foundation and Australian Council for Education Research) across the entire grant portfolio to inform the practices of grantees and other practitioners.
Results
Since 2019, grantees have contributed to 90 national policy changes in 34 countries towards human rights-based approaches to education.
- In Mongolia, the national education coalition with support from the Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Education advocated for improved and more equity based and gender responsive budgeting for education, producing a study “Barriers to Education for Certain Groups of Children” in 2020. In 2022, the government approved a Resolution increasing education budget allocations and incentives for inclusion of children with disabilities in schools.
- The national education coalition in Nepal has been an active player in piloting GPE 2025. As a member of the working group for partnership compact development, the coalition advocated for consultations in local languages to ensure that communities could contribute to the development of the partnership compact and play a role in monitoring the progress of fulfilling compact commitments.
The Civil Society Education Fund
From 2009 to 2019, GPE supported the advocacy activities of national and regional civil society education coalitions in lower-income countries through the CSEF, managed by the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), UNESCO and the World Bank.
Over these years, the CSEF gave grants to coalitions in 62 countries, representing a total investment of US$75.4 million. The grants supported coalitions’ strengthened capacities, cross-country learning and networking, alongside advocacy activities.
The experience of the CSEF and feedback from partners were instrumental in the design and creation of Education Out Loud.
Learn more
For more information contact: @email; subscribe to the Education Out Loud newsletter.