Social Outcomes Conference 2024 - Deep Dive 1.1 Strengthening partnerships for collaborative learning in outcomes-based financing for education projects

Social Outcomes Conference 2024

Date: Thursday 5th September at 12:30 (CET)

Location: Lecture Theatre 1 (or online).

Outcomes-based financing (OBF) is emerging as an innovative financing approach in education aimed at enhancing effectiveness, accountability, and transparency in education programming. This panel discusses the critical role of collaborative learning amongst diverse actors in examining the opportunities and challenges of implementing OBF within the education sector.

Building strong partnerships among researchers, service providers, investors, and funders to engage in a collaborative learning process is an important avenue to enhance the global knowledge base on the complexities, challenges, and success of using OBF. Learning partnerships that foster open communication, trust, and collective meaning-making have the potential to better understand whether, how, and under what conditions the OBF approach is beneficial to improving education outcomes.

Featuring a diverse panel of researchers, service providers, investors, funders, and intermediaries, this discussion offers a comprehensive exploration of how diverse interests converge to provide equitable, inclusive, and quality education to all. Each panellist brings a unique perspective, enriching the discourse with their experiences and insights. The discussion will delve into the significant value that learning and research partnerships bring, the various models of engagement, the obstacles they face, and strategies to overcome these challenges. Furthermore, the discussion will focus on strengthening collaborative learning between different actors to benefit the global education community with a transparent knowledge repository on reflections and lessons learned on the use of OBF in education. The insights shared in the panel should be invaluable for stakeholders either considering OBF or who are already implementing education projects using OBF.

Speakers:

• Dr Dhir Jhingran, Founder And Executive Director, Language and Learning Foundation
• Dr Vikas Maniar, Associate Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences
• Dr Arushi Terway, Theme Lead: Private Sector Approaches, NORRAG – Chair
• Sietse Wouters, Program Director for Innovative Finance, UBS Optimus Foundation

Presentations:

The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Outcomes Framework

The RSC’s experience provides a useful model for thinking about accountability, transparency and trust within outcomes-based approaches to social impact in the arts and cultural sector. This presentation outlines the development of our Outcomes Framework, focusing on the importance of collaboration in the design phase and onwards.

• Dr Matthew Collins, Research Fellow, Royal Shakespeare Company
• Jacqui O’Hanlo, Director of Creative Learning and Engagement, Royal Shakespeare Company
• Dr Lynsey McCulloch, Research Fellow, Royal Shakespeare Company

Outcomes-Based Finance in Early Childhood Care and Education: Reflections and Opportunities

This presentation will share insights from EOF’s experiences in designing three OBF programmes for ECCE. We aim to address key questions through drawing from learnings from our programme portfolio, including how to tackle the ‘measurement puzzle’, how to handle data scarcity when designing programmes, how to structure outcomes funds given the high prevalence of non-state ECCE provision, and select suitable measurement tools.

• Dr Özsel Beleli, Head of Learning and Engagement for Early Childhood Care and Education, Education Outcomes Fund