Rewriting the playbook: supporting government-led education reform in a new donor landscape

• In Event: Reimagining government, donor, researcher and practitioner partnerships for educational transformation at scale

Proposal

Declining traditional donor investment in the education sector, coupled with a persistent global learning crisis, demands a fundamental rethink of how we support education reform. In low and lower-middle income countries, Official Development Assistance (ODA) now represents only a fraction of education financing compared to domestic spend. In recognition of this, traditional donors are shifting their approach from direct service delivery to strategic enablement.

The FCDO’s Scaling Access and Learning in Education (SCALE) programme is at the forefront of this shift, working in partnership with governments and other actors to implement evidence-based reforms at a systems level. This presentation will explore how aligning smart technical assistance with domestic priorities can ensure that limited resources translate into genuine local ownership and meaningful progress at scale.

Two models of partnership currently being offered by the SCALE programme will be examined in turn. First, flexible, ‘smart’ technical assistance (TA), aiming to deliver the right knowledge, evidence, skills, and expertise to the right decision-makers at the right time to support effective investment, policymaking, and reforms. The approach draws on four principles of ‘smart TA’, which seek to address historic criticisms of traditional TA as being unsustainable, leading to dependence, and failing to identify and engage with the root causes of complex challenges. This new model instead advocates the ongoing use of diagnostics, taking an organisation-wide or systems-level approach, thinking and working politically by default, and rewarding genuine partner capacity and ownership (FCDO, 2025). We will share how SCALE applies this approach within the education sector, identifying opportunities for genuine partnership and leveraging a blend of internal FCDO and external expertise to deliver impact through collaborative engagement.

Second, SCALE’s Innovative Partnership model draws from private sector approaches to deploy a test-learn-adapt methodology through targeted investments in promising education reforms. In contrast to the traditional donor programme model, this approach i) builds in real-time learning and adjustments to rapidly optimise an intervention or reform for impact and ii) seeks to build coalitions for scale from the start, bringing governments, donors, researchers and practitioners together and developing a collective plan for scaling. We argue that success hinges on a rigorous set of selection criteria assessing the strength of an intervention’s evidence base, contextual fit, enabling environment, and level of political will across multiple levels of the education system. We will outline how SCALE embeds political economy analysis into investment design and implementation to ensure that scaling ambitions are both technically sound and politically feasible. By identifying credible pathways to sustainable scale from the outset, and influencing throughout implementation, SCALE is supporting partner governments to integrate proven approaches into national systems - maximizing impact for learners.

Throughout the presentation, insights will be drawn from SCALE investments in Lebanon, Sudan, Nigeria, and Malawi - illustrating how SCALE’s principles have been applied across diverse contexts. These examples will highlight the early application of SCALE’s approach and offer practical lessons for donors, policymakers, and practitioners committed to transforming education systems through strategic investment, smart partnerships, and government-led reform.

Author

• Emily Gray, FCDO