What We Do Why EduFinance?
Why Education?
Quality education is a fundamental right. Research shows that giving a child access to good education reduces poverty and inequality, increases life expectancy and gives women and girls more decision-making power. Greater overall levels of education within countries contributes to greater peace, stability and gender equality.
However, even before COVID-19, 617 million children worldwide remained either out of school or in school, but not reaching adequate levels of learning. This perpetuates poverty and global inequality generation after generation.
Investing in Access to Quality Education
Our objective is clear - More children learning and accessing quality education. To do this, Opportunity EduFinance partners with financial institutions to mobilize capital for school owners and parents, and boost the capacity of school leaders and teachers.
OUR THEORY OF CHANGE
Financial institutions invest in schools and parents
Financial institutions provide essential education financing through school improvement loans and school fee loans, using gender aware lending practices.
School owners invest in access & quality
School owners invest in more seats and education quality improvements at their schools that increase enrolment and participation for all learners.
Parents invest in their children
Parents access school fee loans to invest in all of their children's education.
School leaders manage sustainable quality schools
School leaders have the financial, business management and instructional leadership skills necessary to manage high performing schools that are sensitive towards gender and social inclusion.
Teachers develop their skills
Teacher mentors provide ongoing lesson observations and feedback to teachers to continue developing their skills to create inclusive classroom environments for all learners.
Learners engage in lessons
Teachers actively engage learners and provide quality instruction that drives learning.
...More children are learning and have access to quality education
The result of investing in schools, parents and teachers is more children learning in an enabling environment, better equipped to achieve their full potential.
Addressing Challenges with EduFinance Solutions
Today, Opportunity EduFinance is one of the only programs in the world that addresses both the capital needs of parents and school owners, while also deepening the skills and competencies of local school leaders and teachers—all within a sustainable, low-cost framework that can be replicated worldwide.
CHALLENGES |
EDUFINANCE SOLUTIONS |
|---|---|
| School owners lack capital to grow and improve their affordable non-state schools, limiting their ability to build new classrooms, add seats, hire new teachers, or purchase ICT. | School Improvement Loans provide school owners with capital to meet their unique needs, including building new facilities to accommodate more students, and making infrastructure improvements to enhance school quality. |
| Parents struggle to afford the up-front costs of uniforms, fees, shoes, and supplies for all their children due to irregular, unpredictable, or seasonal income, which lead many to face the impossible choice of sending just one, or none, of their children to school when money is tight. | School Fee Loans provide parents with extra capital so they can send their children to school without risk of being sent home or without sacrificing other needs like food, healthcare, or growing their small business. |
| School owners often operate independently without access to a network of peers to share best practices, leaving many to tackle the challenges of running a local, affordable school on their own. | Network of School Clusters formed through EduQuality to bring together small groups of educators from different schools, who meet regularly to share challenges and best practices, attend professional development training together, and collaborate on areas for school development planning. |
| School leaders struggle to identify the best steps to take to achieve their vision for a quality school, and often must make choices on how to invest in their schools with limited resources and limited knowledge of education best practices. | The Pathways to Excellence guide offers a customizable road map to help school leaders assess their school’s level of quality across 18 domains and then develop and implement a step-by-step school development plan to target areas for improvement based on their key priorities. |
| School leaders have a variety of backgrounds, and often lack all the skill sets necessary to run a sustainable, growing quality school, or access to the training necessary to build their capacity in key areas. | School Leadership Professional Development workshops are designed to build the capacity of school leaders by offering practical, hands-on training focused on critical skills for running a school, including business and financial management and instructional leadership. |
| Teachers in non-state schools may have limited access to professional development offered to teachers in state schools. Teachers may also have limited training, which impacts their ability to use best practices in the classroom to help children learn effectively. | Teacher Mentor Professional Development trainings engage teachers at their level and helps them build up their skills in the areas of learner engagement, teaching and learning, and literacy. Teacher mentors also receive training on delivering effective professional development, observing classroom instruction, and coaching their peer teachers. |
The Pillars of EduFinance
Our EduFinance model is framed by four key pillars that are central to our work.
Financial Sustainability
The Opportunity EduFinance model promotes financially sustainable investment into low cost education for school proprietors, parents, students and financial institutions. By taking this approach, we ensure school owners and parents will continue to have access to the capital they need. (Click below to see our EduFinance Technical Assistane and EduQuality sustainability models)
Scalable
Many education interventions lack the scalability to significantly reduce the global education deficit. Through our network of local financial institution partners, the Opportunity EduFinance model drives significant and scalable investment into low cost education, and school improvement through the Self Improving School System model.
High Leverage
Significantly more investment into low cost education is needed if we are to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4. Through our investment into technical assistance services for financial institution partners, we are able to mobilize private capital at a high leverage. Our analysis has found that for every US$1 invested in technical assistance, financial institutions lend US$64 on average in education loans.
Impactful
Everything that we do is designed to break down the key drivers of the education deficit: access and quality.