Our series of technical briefs, 'Putting SDG4 into practice', bundles our knowledge and experience of different themes in various country-specific contexts. Each edition zooms in on a specific building block of quality education, and how VVOB strengthens them in its partner countries.
Putting SDG4 into practice #6: Moving education innovations from pilot to scale
Solutions that work need to start working for the many, in as many different contexts as possible and for as many different learners as possible. But scaling up locally effective education innovations to different contexts and then sustaining – in each setting – the shifts in practice, policy and structures that this improvement requires, is proving to be quite challenging. As the principles and good practices for successfully and sustainably scaling up in the education sector are becoming increasingly clear from research and experience, VVOB has come to realise that our signature approach consists of three characteristics that are especially important to the endeavour:
- we work well with/in government systems,
- we are devoted to elevating teachers and school leaders, and
- VVOB is a "long-termer".
In this technical brief, we share some valuable lessons learnt with practical examples from Ecuador, Rwanda, Vietnam and Zambia, including how to build broad and lasting alliances for your innovation and how to ensure ease of adoption for government partners.
We are grateful to Management Systems International (MSI), the Brookings Center for Universal Education, Educate!, Pratham and STiR Education for sharpening our thinking along the way and for working with us to develop the Education Scalability Checklist and accompanying User Guide.
More in the 'Putting SDG4 into practice' series:
- #1: School leadership
- #2: Professional learning communities
- #3: Learning through play
- #4: Enhancing adolescent wellbeing, learning and opportunities
- #5: Gender-responsive pedagogy for early childhood education
- #7: All means all: Inclusive and equitable leading and teaching
- #8: Climate Change Education
- #9: Economic Evaluation of Continuous Professional Development in Education