Collective Learning Initiative for Outcomes Based Finance in Early Childhood Care and Education
The Collective Learning Initiative (CLI), launched through the Education Outcomes Fund (EOF), is a collaborative effort designed to strengthen and support outcomes-based financing (OBF) for early childhood care and education (ECCE) globally.
The global education crisis has left millions of children without access to schooling, a number worsened by COVID-19, with 33 million children - mostly in low-income countries - lacking pre-primary education that is essential for school readiness and long-term success. Despite a goal for 10% of education aid to support early childhood, only 1.4% reached pre-primary education in 2022, though recent commitments from 147 UN states and funding increases by the World Bank show progress. Outcomes-based financing (OBF) approaches, like impact bonds that link funding to results, offer a promising solution to improve quality and efficiency in ECCE, with participatory research and collaboration key to developing sustainable, impactful practices.
The CLI was initiated as a platform to bring together diverse stakeholders involved in different stages of OBF programmes within the ECCE sector. Through this initiative, stakeholders can share their experiences, draw from emerging lessons, and refine their approaches to ensure that young children have better access to quality education and care.
The consortium consists of:
- The Government Outcomes Lab: who bring world class research capabilities, global convening power and comprehensive knowledge-sharing infrastructure for outcomes-focused cross-sector partnerships.
- NORRAG: who bring deep sectoral expertise on the use of outcomes-based financing in education and extensive networks of 5000+ learning experts in the sector.
- Ecorys: who bring over a decade of experience conducting high quality research and evaluation of payment by result contracts and impact bonds across 4 continents in an agile and responsive manner.
The group were united by a shared vision: to make a lasting impact on education for young children, by creating a collaborative, inclusive, and responsive knowledge exchange to generate evidence and best practices that can inform, inspire and improve the practical development of outcomes-based financing approaches in the early childhood care and education sector.
The CLI needs to do this with and for practitioners across the world, using innovative participatory methodologies, open access knowledge infrastructure, and extensive networks withing the OBF and ECCE communities, with a view to nurturing a long term, self-sustaining, thriving Community of Practice.
