Beyond Outcomes: Defining and measuring system strengthening in foundational learning

• In Event: Demystifying System strengthening: Measuring, embedding, and sustaining education reform at scale

Proposal

India has witnessed unprecedented national and state-level focus on foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN), culminating in the NIPUN Bharat Mission which set the goal of universal FLN by 2026–27. This has generated medium term partnerships between governments and non-profits, many of which have demonstrated measurable learning improvements. Yet the frenetic pace of implementation and emphasis on immediate outcomes has often overshadowed the less visible but essential work of sustainable reform and institutional capabilities. When program level changes are pursued primarily for short-term results, whether by governments to show progress or nonprofits to demonstrate effective partnerships, the question of sustainability often takes a backseat: will these changes endure once external attention and resources shift?
Language and Learning Foundation (LLF), a non-profit in India supporting foundational learning in collaboration with governments has, since its inception, approached system partnerships somewhat differently. LLF’s central commitment has been to strengthen the capability of education systems themselves, while ensuring improvement in learning outcomes. This long-term orientation is evident in its decade-long partnerships with state governments. Through this work, LLF recognized the need for a structured way to assess and track system strengthening, beyond learning outcomes.
This paper, and LLF’s proposed approach, responds to this gap by presenting a framework for identifying and assessing dimensions of system strengthening in FLN programs rooted in the complex reality of government systems. The World Bank’s SABER framework benchmarks domains such as policy, finance, and implementation capacity as critical for strong education systems (World Bank, 2013). The RISE programme applies systems thinking, emphasizing alignment of accountability relationships to produce learning outcomes (Pritchett, 2015). LLF’s framework extends existing global approaches by grounding them in the realities of long-term partnerships.
Our framework identifies six dimensions central to system strengthening: political salience, continuity of leadership, institutional ownership and capacity, policy coherence, capacity of the middle tier, and feedback and learning loops. By examining these together, rather than in isolation, the framework emphasises the importance of system reform and strengthening at different levels.
Some of these dimensions lie primarily in the domain of government, for example, tenure stability, while others create points for nonprofits to make sustained contributions, such as building pedagogical capacity or supporting data-use. To make these dimensions operational the framework serves three functions: guiding initiative design, bringing system strengthening center stage, and enabling progress tracking. Importantly, along with the framework we propose a set of indicators to track progress across these dimensions. These indicators, and the framework as a whole, are now being discussed and validated with government input before wider implementation.
This paper will present the contours of LLF’s systems strengthening framework, early insights from its application, and a forward-looking agenda for collaborative design with governments and ecosystem actors. It argues that nonprofits cannot ensure sustainability on their own; only genuine government ownership can embed reforms in a sustainable manner. However, nonprofits can play a catalytic role by keeping systems strengthening central, designing for long-term change, and generating evidence that allow governments and funders to value institutional capability alongside learning outcomes.

Authors

• Dhir Jhingran, Language and Learning Foundation

• Shivakshi Rana, Language and Learning Foundation