Empowering Pre-Schools, Primary Schools, and Secondary Schools to Achieve SDG4 by 2030
Schools2030 will work across ten countries for its initial launch in 2020:
KENYA
INDIA
KYRGYZSTAN
BRAZIL
PORTUGAL
TAJIKISTAN
PAKISTAN
UGANDA
TANZANIA
AFGHANISTAN
WHERE
WHAT
Schools2030 is a new globally informed, locally rooted 10-year longitudinal action research and learning improvement programme working with 1000 pioneering pre-schools, primary schools, and secondary schools across 10 countries, searching for and supporting positive deviance about ‘what works’ to improve holistic quality learning for all.
WHO
Schools2030 will collaborate with:
10
NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS
10
LOCAL RESEARCH/DESIGN PARTNERS
IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH
1000
SCHOOLS
50,000
TEACHERS
500,000
LEARNERS
Through its annual dissemination of evidence at local, national and global forums, Schools2030 is estimated to indirectly reach 10 million learners and 2 million teachers.
HOW
Schools2030 will involve a new, historic coalition of leaders in international early childhood development and education to:
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Identify and support 1000 innovative schools/communities from the global south that demonstrate new strategies to improve holistic learning outcomes for marginalized children/youth.
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Generate actionable evidence about ‘how’ school actors can improve lifelong education by tracking the learning progression of children/young people in relationship to school-based solutions.
Three Simultaneus Cohorts
Schools 2030 will track the relationship between school-driven solutions and holistic learning outcomes of students across three cohorts from 2020 to 2030:
PRE-SCHOOL • PRIMARY SCHOOL • SECONDARY SCHOOL

WHY
Rarely are school leaders, teachers and students invited to listen, reflect, and self-discover the wisdom that lies among them about ‘what works’ to improve quality learning for all. Even rarer are instances where invitation, dialogue and self-discovery lead to long-term community actions and external investments, guided by data that the school collects, processes, and uses to achieve holistic learning outcomes for all.
Schools2030 seeks to dramatically change the status quo by equipping frontline teachers and school leaders with the knowledge, skills, and platforms to better design, measure and showcase new solutions to achieve SDG4 by 2030.
As a result, Schools2030 offers a new global pulse about how to operationalize SDG4 in classroom practice from the bottom-up and amplify the often under-represented insights, creativity, and resilience of the heroic frontline teachers and school stakeholders striving to achieve quality learning for all.
DONORS
Schools2030 is supported by a visionary and historic consortium of nine philanthropic partners that bring their collective technical expertise and financial resources together to promote and scale effective innovations for improving holistic learning outcomes at scale:


GLOBAL
At the global level, AKF coordinates the Schools2030 technical partners to produce new shared resources in:
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Holistic learning assessments for pre-school, primary and secondary school-aged cohorts;
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Education technologies for school-level data management in offline and online contexts;
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Design thinking tools and methodologies for use at the classroom and school level.
AKF also partners with a wide variety of global partners in educational research, policy and practice to ensure that schools remain at the heart of achieving the United Nations SDGs over the next decade.
NATIONAL
At the national level*, AKF coordinates the implementation of the Schools2030 programme by leveraging its:
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Long-term commitment to each of the Schools2030 countries with existing staff and investments;
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Long-standing partnerships and programmes with local and national-level government leadership;
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Extensive experience in collaborating with civil society and school-level partners to deliver results.
*Of note, the national Schools2030 programme in Brazil is led by Itau Social Foundation with its local implementing partners Ashoka and University of São Paulo.
PARTNERS
Schools2030 is supported by a growing community of global technical partners that provide assistance in the planning, design, and research over the next ten years:
VERA SOLUTIONS
(Co-developed a new offline mobile app for learning assessment called PROMISE3)
AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL FOR EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH - ACER
(Developing a global suite of learning assessment tools for Schools2030)
EXPERTS 'ON-DEMAND'
(a growing network of technical and academic experts are supporting the Schools2030 programme design and implementation at scale)
Global Coalition Of Partners
GLOBAL LEADERSHIP
Global Steering Committee
-
Dubai Cares
-
Aga Khan Foundation
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Wellspring Philanthropic Fund
-
Oak Foundation
-
IKEA Foundation
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LEGO Foundation
-
Itau Social Foundation
-
Jacobs Foundation
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Porticus Foundation
Global Programme Secretariat
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Aga Khan Foundation
Global Technical Partners
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Design Thinking for Schools: AKF Innovation
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Data for Schools: Vera Solutions
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Learning Assessments: ACER
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Research Synthesis: Academics On-Demand
NATIONAL LEADERSHIP
10 National Advisory Committees
A country-level advisory group will consist of representatives across the educational ecosystem including potential stakeholders from:
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Teachers
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School Leaders
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Families
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Donors
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Bi/Multi-Laterals
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Private Sector
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Academia
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Civil Society
1000 Schools
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100 Schools pre/primary/secondary-schools per country
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Skills Development in Design Thinking, Action Research, Assessment,
and Real-Time Monitoring -
Management of Flexible Response Fund Micro-Grants
SCHOOL LEADERSHIP
As illustrated above, Schools2030 involves a historic, diverse coalition of leadership at the school, national and global levels to inform and inspire systems change. Together, Schools2030 will:
GENERATE
longitudinal action research about ‘what works’ in pre-schools, primary schools and secondary schools that support children and young people to achieve holistic learning outcomes;
CONTRIBUTE
to policy dialogue at local, national, and international levels by providing new evidence, from the bottom-up rather than the top-down, about ‘what works’ for advancing 21st century competencies for children and youth for systems change at scale;
DIVERSIFY
the evidence about ‘what works’ in early childhood development, education, and youth programming by partnering with school stakeholders and learning partners from the global south in helping implement Schools2030 across the 1000 schools and communities in ten countries;
INNOVATE
new ways how we, as an education and ECD sector, can better enable local education leaders to design, measure, track, and showcase ‘what works’ to improve quality learning for all.
New Tools
Schools2030 will deploy three new resources for the programme:
PROMISE3
Schools2030 will leverage its existing partnership with Salesforce.org and Vera Solutions in rolling out a new, offline, mobile learning assessment app called PROMISE3 (Programme Management Information System for Education by Everyone, Everywhere) that enables local ECD and education stakeholders to better collect, analyze, and act on new learning assessment data that will seek to:
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Improve local classroom teaching/learning assessment at scale and
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Enable each school to participate in the global evidence-generating program by ensuring data anonymity and security at scale.
Holistic Quality Learning Assessments
Schools2030 will leverage its partnership with the Australian Council for Educational Research, AKF, the Altamont Group, and a global technical advisory group of experts in ECD and Education to co-develop and co-contextualize with schools a suite of new and existing learning assessment tools to be used at the classroom and school levels throughout the programme. The goal is to better understand the practical impact of measuring, analyzing and acting on new data from a teachers’ perspective in advancing social and emotional learning, 21st century skills, and subject knowledge mastery.



Design Thinking for Schools
Schools2030 will leverage its partnership with former lecturers from the Stanford University d-School in rolling out a new, school-level design thinking toolkit that will enable preschool, primary school and secondary school stakeholders to co-identify their challenges, develop new solutions, apply for funding, and implement classroom-level strategies to improve quality learning for all.
ACADEMIC CALENDAR START DATE
Group 1 - Brazil, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania
Group 2 - India, Pakistan, Afghanistan
Group 3 - Portugal, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan
Each of the Schools2030 country-level programmes will be implemented in consultation with a Schools2030 National Advisory Committee that will include stakeholders from across the educational and early child development ecosystem that will help guide and align the programme to national priorities in research, policy and practice.