Investment in quality education is a precondition for sustainable social and economic development. Due to the resource constraints prevailing in most countries, it is essential to maximise access for learners and to secure optimum resource utilisation through high levels of external and internal efficiency.
We work with governments, agencies and corporations to encourage and develop strategic policy reforms in the education sector with the aim of promoting efficient education initiatives in the reduction of poverty and improving sustainable human development. Social development is seen as crucial in human development and is central in achieving basic rights. We see social development as a critical crosscutting issue and we promote gender equitable approaches and combating HIV/AIDS through increasing the levels of knowledge and understanding in our support to sector reform. Our education group helps its clients to find ways of achieving education objectives more effectively.
In education management we work to assist capacity building, support decentralisation initiatives and monitor and evaluate major large reform programmes. We also work with donor groups to explore ways to move toward greater harmonisation in development assistance through improved consultation, co-operation and collaboration.
We support initiatives to enhance access to and improve the quality of all education sub-sectors (pre-primary, primary, secondary and higher education) within sector development programmes.
In primary and secondary education we particularly support governments to improve access and retention of the disadvantaged and the quality and system management through strengthening institutional and individual management. In order to ensure the sustainability of education, innovative means and learning from good practice between regions and the use of community participation must accompany traditional initiatives as, for instance, training of school managers, teacher training and curriculum development.
We recognize the importance of strengthening institutional capacity to manage education resources in the primary sector and translate these into effective learning situations for all children. Much of our work has involved developing capacity to provide effective pre-service and in-service teacher development and critically, improving the quality of teaching.
Our approach to educational development and change is based upon recognizing the diversity of partners’ contexts and needs, adapting our approach accordingly based upon participatory and bottom-up approaches.