Education Out Loud: IIEP as a learning partner
As an EOL Global Learning Partner from 2023 to 2025, IIEP supported EOL grantees through research, knowledge sharing, and training activities to enhance the effectiveness and impact of civil society in ensuring more inclusive, equitable, transparent, and accountable education systems.
What is Education Out Loud?
Education Out Loud (EOL) is The Global Partnership for Education’s (GPE) fund for advocacy and social accountability. It provides support for civil society to become active and influential in shaping education policy to better meet the needs of communities.
Innovative uses of new technologies by CSOs to improve transparency and accountability
As part of this project, IIEP conducted research on Civil Society Organizations' (CSOs') use of new technologies in innovative ways to improve accountability and transparency in education. It included an international online survey, a literature review, and a series of mini-case studies, written by EOL grantees themselves, which focused on specific cases, such as the Olavula platform in Mozambique.
The survey results have been compiled into an online inventory. It features over 32 digital initiatives in 34 different countries, of which 25 are created or co-created by CSOs. Using a variety of approaches afforded by new technologies, including crowd sourcing, social media, or chatbots, these initiatives empower citizens to improve accountability within their local education systems, for example, by providing feedback on the quality of school services, tracking the use of public funds, or reporting instances of corruption.
A publication, including the literature review and the results of the mini-case studies developed with the grantees, will be available early 2026.
Course on tools to improve transparency and accountability
Over 100 EOL grantees participated in two online courses on tools to promote transparency and accountability in education (in English and in French). Held in 2023, this practice-oriented course helped participants learn about the risks and impacts of corruption in the education sector and introduced some of the tools that CSOs can use to address corruption and improve access, quality, equity, and efficiency in education. Tools included School Report Cards, Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys, Codes of Conduct, and Integrity Pacts.
Course on open government in education
This online course, with nearly 70 participants, focused on how civil society can be leveraged to help foster more transparent and accountable education systems. Participants were introduced to four key open government mechanisms, namely: open school data, open budgeting, open contracting, and social auditing. Participants also worked in groups to develop a country action plan that would allow them to apply one of the mechanisms from the course to their national context.
Interactive webinars
IIEP also offered an interactive webinar on open government for EOL grantees in both English and French, as well as an interactive online webinar on Open School Data for EOL grantees. 155 grantees participated across the four webinars. IIEP invited experts who are actively involved in designing and implementing open school data and open government programmes, including Dondon Parafina to present Check my school to open school data initiative in the Philippines, Kiran Bhatty from the Center for Policy Research, India to discuss social audits, Paulo Peixoto from the Centre de Estudos Sociais to share his knowledge on participatory budgeting for students in Portugal, and finally Ayao Mawuli Agbagnon from the UNICEF Data must speak programme, to present on an open school data project in Togo.
Tune in to PlanED
Three new podcast episodes as part of the PlanED series have been produced, focusing on civil society and educational planning. In the various episodes, EOL grantees, IIEP staff, and other international experts delved into participatory educational planning with civil society organizations, redefining citizen-government boundaries in educational planning, and using digital tools to track educational progress and planning.
