Global Partnership for Education (GPE)

Overview

High rates of learning poverty and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to undermine the attainment of global and local education goals.

MOPAN’s new assessment of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) takes a close look at how the partnership is helping its members respond to these challenges and support transformation of education systems.

It finds a partnership that is reinventing itself to deliver on its members heightened ambitions. Building on principles of local ownership, better coordinated aid delivery and transparency, GPE has improved inclusive dialogue, helped partner countries identify and address bottlenecks in the education sector and strengthened the relevance of its financial and non-financial support to the needs and contexts of partner countries.

The assessment also presents opportunities for further growth. Delivering fully on the partnership’s heighted strategic objectives will require all actors to align with and rally behind prioritized education reforms. It must continue to reaffirm its efficiency as a channel for education aid and it must better demonstrate results with relevant and timely data to inform decision making by stakeholders.

Performance rating summary

GPE organisational performance wheel 2024 — Organisational performance

Key findings

A GPE 2025 strategic vision and plan which are aligned with the ambitions of partner countries.
GPE’s strong comparative advantage as a multi-stakeholder partnership that fosters inclusive policy dialogue at the global and country levels.
A commitment to using evidence-based learning and drawing on stakeholder feedback to inform improvements to its strategy, governance and operational management.
Its ability to adapt and meet the evolving needs of partner countries, including by strengthening the relevance of its processes and grants, as evidenced by GPE’s effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Its increasing success at promoting gender in education systems through its processes and grants and at exploring opportunities to build on this success and scale up its work in other cross-cutting priorities.

Continue to clarify GPE’s role in the international education architecture and further deepen relationships with other key actors including through collaboration agreements to improve consistency in the working relationships on the ground.
Reaffirm GPE’s efficiency as a channel for education aid through an ongoing focus on grant agent performance and accountability, and take steps to minimise potential trade-offs between upholding aid effectiveness principles and prioritising disbursement.
Consider further opportunities for all actors in the partnership to fulfil commitments set out in the Charter, including through greater alignment of resources to partner country priorities.
Building on the experience with Mid-Term Reviews of Partnership Compacts, further strengthen GPE tools and results framework in the next strategy to better assess GPE’s progress towards country-level results.