Giving Compass' Take:

• A report about the Partnership to Strengthen Innovation and Practice in Secondary Education by Mathematica revealed both the ability of the program to improve secondary education outcomes for marginalized populations in under-resourced countries and opportunities for improvement.

• How can philanthropy best support underresourced students succeed? What subpopulations need additional and/or specialized support?  

• Learn more about the Partnership to Strengthen Innovation and Practice in Secondary Education.

Millions of children globally are struggling to obtain meaningful education due to limited access to schools, poor quality of teaching, and lack of relevance between curricula and labor market needs. In 2011, MacArthur joined with several other donors to found the Partnership to Strengthen Innovation and Practice in Secondary Education (PSIPSE), a collaborative that seeks to increase secondary education access and improve learning outcomes for marginalized populations in under-resourced countries.

Mathematica produced a literature review on existing evidence of initiatives focused on promoting secondary education, assisted the collaborative with refining its theory of change based on this evidence, and developed a monitoring, evaluation, and learning framework for the PSIPSE that outlines an approach for collecting data about the work of grantees that can be used to facilitate cross-cutting learning and fostering scale-up.

The monitoring report found that nearly all PSIPSE grantees are conducting needs assessments, monitoring participant progress, and obtaining qualitative feedback.

Monitoring data gathered across the PSIPSE portfolio surfaced common trends with regard to interventions aiming to promote girls’ secondary education, including:

When aiming to increase participation, it is important to understand and address both supply and demand sides of barriers to educational access, it is vital to work with men as well as women in effort to shift community attitudes related to girls’ education, and it is imperative to not only build overarching demand for secondary education among girls but directly tackle key barriers to access, such as early (or repeat) pregnancies.

Read the full article about the Partnership to Strengthen Innovation and Practice in Secondary Education at MacArthur Foundation.