Worldwide, a quarter of a billion children, adolescents and youth are still not in school today. Of those enrolled, approximately 617 million fail to achieve basic learning proficiencies each year. Nearly 60% of the world’s youth who cannot read or write are girls, underlying the ongoing gender and equity disparities in delivering quality education for all.
As one of AKDN’s five leading agencies in education, the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) is committed to collaborating with government and civil society partners to equip girls, boys, and young adults with the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values needed to help them interact effectively with the world and become contributing members of society.
This includes increasing access to quality and secure learning opportunities, accelerating progress of holistic and relevant learning outcomes, and strengthening delivery of inclusive and pluralistic learning systems. Critical to this work, Schools2030 is a 10-year, 1000-school longitudinal learning improvement programme across 10 countries seeking to empower the next generation of children and young people with the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values to interact effectively with the world and become contributing members of society. The programme will benefit approximately 500,000 learners each year and inform 10 national governments with new evidence-based solutions about effective learning improvement strategies for children and youth, indirectly benefiting millions of learners by the end of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in 2030.
Programme highlights 1: AKF’s education improvement programmes annually benefit over 1 million learners and 4,000 government schools and community-based learning centres, enabling children and young people to become more resilient learners, innovative problem-solvers, and leaders of a more pluralistic society.
Current programme countries: Afghanistan, India, Kenya, Kyrgyz Republic, Mozambique, Pakistan, Portugal, Russia, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Uganda.
Increasing access to quality and secure learning opportunities
Many children, especially girls and young adults continue to face significant social, economic, and geographic barriers to accessing quality education. AKF leads a number of contextually relevant education improvement programmes to ensure more children and young people come to school, stay in school, and learn. AKF focuses on promoting safe, secure, and gender-responsive flexible back-to-school initiatives. This includes delivering teacher professional development programming about how to create and curate more inclusive learning environments. Critical to large, systemic change is engaging government and civil society partners in evidence-based education policy dialogue and reform.
Accelerating progress of holistic and relevant learning outcomes
While many children and young people around the world are successfully enrolled in school, they often demonstrate low levels of learning. AKF works to develop new, innovative teaching and learning resources to enhance learners’ levels of curiosity, resilience, imagination, and respect for the well-being of themselves, their families, communities and planet. Critical to this work is ensuring children and young people are equipped with new skills for the future, such as digital literacy and entrepreneurship, to help them navigate social and economic uncertainty. AKF prioritises student and teacher-led human centred design thinking for innovative solutions that are from the bottom-up rather than top-down that we can scale. One of AKF’s key education initiatives is Schools2030, a globally informed, locally rooted 10-year longitudinal action research and learning improvement programme working with 1,000 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.
Strengthening service delivery quality of inclusive and pluralistic education systems
Educational equity and equality continues to be hindered by ongoing gender, social, and economic disparities throughout the world. AKF has adopted pluralism and ethics as a critical lens through which it approaches its work with teacher and educator professional development programmes. This includes more gender responsive educations systems for both girl and boys.
AKF supports more demand-driven, contextually relevant EdTech solutions to help children learn, such as mobile reading apps in local languages. AKF’s new offline/online app, PROMISE3 helps teachers better respond to emerging gaps in individual student enrolment, attendance and learning outcomes throughout the school year through collection, analysis, and use of real-time data.
Programme highlights 1: During its initial years, AKF’s efforts around universities improvement have focussed on universities in Afghanistan, Tajikistan and northern Pakistan.
Programme highlights 2: The Universities Improvement Programme involves three AKDN agencies: Aga Khan Foundation, Aga Khan University, University of Central Asia.
Current programme countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan
Mountain Universities Partnership
The Aga Khan Foundation, the University of Central Asia and the Aga Khan University are implementing a Universities Improvement Programme in the Kyrgyz Republic, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan, as the inaugural initiative of the AKDN’s broader Universities Improvement Programme. The Mountain Universities Partnership upgrades the capacities of priority faculties at community institutions, develops universities’ research capacities, strengthens teaching and faculty development and improves university systems—especially IT and libraries.
