Gates Foundation launches a $68 million education initiative

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has launched a new global education initiative to support educations systems in India and sub-Saharan Africa.

The initiative will provide better resources to schools and education systems to improve teaching and learning and has a budget of $68 million for the next 4 years.

Girindre Beeharry, Director of Global Education at the Gates Foundation, announced the new strategy in a blog post. He noted the significant improvements to global education over the last 15 years but that there was still a large amount of work to be done.

For example, Girindre Beeharry highlighted that although school attendance has increased in recent years this is not necessarily translated into achievements.

He also commented how the solution for improving education will be unique to each country and that the Gates Foundation’s approach will recognise this.

The strategy will focus on 4 themes: cost-effective approaches to supporting learning and teaching; assessing the causes of poor school performance and finding tailored solutions; making data on learning outcomes comparable across countries to track progress; and understanding barriers to female education.

Girindre Beeharry added:

“Leaving these students behind amplifies inequality, as the learning deficiency is largest among the poor…the learning deficit is also at the root of what worries many governments: A poorly skilled youth population.”

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Image credit: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation