Learning for All Initiative

Pre-pandemic, more than half of children in low- and middle-income countries were unable to read a simple story by age 10. In the poorest countries, this figure was as high as 80 percent. School closures, which affected over one billion children during the pandemic, have exacerbated low learning and inequity in education systems. In response to the current crisis in education and increasing demand for actionable evidence, LAI will fund randomized evaluations (full and pilot evaluations and travel/proposal development grants) and scale projects to improve children’s foundational learning, especially related to literacy, numeracy, and breadth of skills. Additional focus areas include girls’ education, the intersections of climate and education, and the long-term economic and health impacts of education interventions.

LAI aims to improve global learning outcomes by identifying the next generation of promising evidence-based approaches that can be tested, replicated, and adapted by policymakers to their local contexts. In addition to evaluating innovations, the Initiative also funds evidence-based interventions at a larger scale and in new contexts to better understand their generalizability, mechanisms of change, and pathways to scale.