Investing in the how and who as well as the what: The What Works Hub for Global Education’s approach

• In Event: Roundtable Session 10
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Mobilizing demand driven evidence in LMICs to improve policy and policy implementation in a digital society: learning across major global initiatives

Proposal

The What Works Hub for Global Education is an international partnership focused on working out how to implement education reforms effectively at scale, whilst supporting governments in real time to do it. It is a joint research and policy initiative, whose ambition is to apply innovative research approaches to better understand how to implement reforms in a way that will reach all children, whilst also strengthening the capacity of stakeholders to translate and use evidence to answer their questions and inform their decisions.

The What Works Hub for Global Education is founded on the recognition that knowing what has worked well to improve learning in research pilots is only half the battle: governments need to know how to put effective approaches into practice, sustainably, at scale, for all children in the classroom so that no one is left behind. To achieve this the What Works Hub for Global Education was set up as a joint collaboration between policymakers, academics, donors and implementing partners, and was designed with three pillars crossing research and policy work. These pillars focus on: (i) evidence synthesis and translation, (ii) working with governments to better use and generate data and evidence, and (iii) implementation research to help us understand the key ingredients of how to deliver reforms.

The What Works Hub for Global Education is founded on lessons learned from other UK-funded research initiatives and wider research on how to produce demand driven research that informs policy and planning decisions. The presentation will set out what has been learnt from the education research portfolio, how evidence is applied on evidence uptake and how this is shaping the approach of the What Works Hub for Global Education. In particular, the presentation will address decisions behind the programme and it’s three pillars of work and how it strives to respond to what policymakers need to make evidence-informed decisions. It will also cover how the programme draws on the strength of a broad research consortium, global community of practice and strategic partnerships to achieve it’s aims. The presentation will speak to what this looks like in practice at a country level with examples from Rwanda, Kenya, India and Ghana related to the conference theme, and share some of the tools and approaches developed through the programme.

Author

• Laura Pearson, FCDO