IFE Executive Education
We are excited to announce that the first cohort of participants of the Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) Executive Education course in Innovative Financing for Education (IFE) have completed the course. The course brought together professionals from diverse stakeholder groups, primarily from the Global South. There were two participants representing Ministries of Education, two representing non-governmental organisations, two representing the private sector, two participants from bilateral organisations, one representing a multilateral organisation and one representing a government entity. The following countries were represented: Bhutan, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Switzerland and Uzbekistan.
In 2023, NORRAG, in partnership with the Geneva Graduate Institute and UNESCO International Institute for Education Planning (IIEP), offered the Executive Education course on Innovative Financing for Education. Course participants received scholarship funding from the Jacobs Foundation, KIX EMAP Hub, and NORRAG. The Executive Education course was offered fully online as a Certificate of Advanced Studies. The course instructors, Arushi Terway, Archana Mehendale, and Nicholas Burnett, are global experts on the topic and were able to draw on their own professional experience and NORRAG research to teach the course. The course was designed to equip education and finance experts with the following knowledge and skills: the ability to assess key educational issues at the regional/national level and explore alternative solutions, critical reading and synthesis skills to evaluate evidence on innovative financing for education, the ability to formulate problems and analyse the design of potentially relevant innovative financing solutions, measurement and evaluation skills relevant to innovative financing mechanisms, and stakeholder engagement and negotiation skills. The course also covered a broad range of innovative financing mechanisms and case studies of initiatives that have been implemented within the education sector to critically analyse the relevance, applicability, adaptability, efficiency, efficacy, and effectiveness of financing models for reaching the targets of SDG 4. Course instructors and participants engaged in critical dialogue on the challenges and potential solutions for education financing within diverse contexts in low-and middle-income countries.