System change

We have a long history of delivering transformational education reform programmes around the world effecting system-wide change at local, regional and national level.

System change on a national level

In the UK, we worked with every primary school classroom in England when we delivered the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies from 1996 to 2005 to improve the pedagogy and the quality of children’s learning in literacy and mathematics. This policy represents the most ambitious centrally conceived and directed professional learning programme that has ever been attempted in England and children today are still benefitting from the legacy of our work. Equally, we worked with all schools and teachers across Wales to embed the Literacy and Numeracy Framework into curriculum planning and teaching and learning from 2013 to 2016.

Girls’ Education Challenge in Kenya

In Kenya, our Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) -funded Girls’ Education Challenge programme adopts a holistic approach to change culture and behaviours to ensure marginalised girls can be educated. We work with almost 90,000 girls in rural, pastoral communities across Kenya as well as in urban slums on improving access to education and the quality of education. By working with not only the schools but the girls themselves, their families and their communities, we have put everything in place for the change to be sustainable.

Improving learner outcomes in Rwanda

We have worked closely in post-genocide Rwanda to help to deliver system change; from designing the Education Sector Strategic Plan in 2001 to today, working with every government-funded primary school in the country to improve learner outcomes in English and mathematics through our Building Learning Foundations. We work closely with the ministry to build capacity as well as at regional and local level to ensure that our work is effective.

Enabling a bilingual education in Brunei

We have been working in Brunei as CfBT Brunei since 1984 and have helped the Bruneian government to achieve exceptional results: of the seven top-ranking Asian nations and territories in the PISA 2012 rankings (Shanghai China, Hong Kong China, Korea, Japan, Singapore and Macau China) Bruneian students’ English language proficiency outperforms all but Singapore. We provide and support a community of English language teachers and furthered this with a literacy and numeracy coaching programme to deliver quality education.

Critical support to the development agenda

We play a prominent role in the international development space through our strategic partnerships with the UK’s Department for International Development, the European Commission and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad). As recognised partners on their international aid agreements, we have been providing rapid response education consultancy services around the world since 2009. We apply a deep and continually refreshed understanding of education system reform, blending system and political economy analysis with local diagnostics to support the development of new policies, structures and systems.

System change on a local level

We have been working with local education authorities and clusters of schools in England to implement system and behavioural change through a self-improving, peer review framework: Schools Partnership Programme. At the vanguard of collaborative school improvement in England, we also offer tailored support and consultancy for groups of schools wanting to collaborate on their own school-led system.