Who we are and how we work
Education Development Trust is an international not-for-profit organisation working to improve education outcomes around the world. We seek to improve education and transitions into work through expert research on what works. Our experts deliver highly contextualised programmes designed to transform education systems, schools and lives.
Who we are
Our vision is a world in which all lives are transformed through excellent education. We strive to change education for good, grounding our work in research and evidence. We support leaders to raise standards, improve school performance, develop great teachers and open career pathways – transforming lives and futures in contexts as diverse as Brunei, Kenya, England, Rwanda and Dubai.
We combine global research and our longstanding expertise with regional knowledge to inform education policy and practice and deliver programmes around the world. Through our work and expertise – which spans from early years education right through to post-school careers – we seek to strengthen education systems, transform teaching and learning, ensure effective transitions into work, and contribute to global responses to key education challenges.
We work in diverse contexts all over the world, often including challenging environments, hard-to-reach localities and marginalised communities where the need is greatest. In all these locations, we use evidence-based methods to raise education standards, deliver innovation in schools, help teachers to improve their quality of instruction, empower educators to effect sustainable and cost-effective transformation in their schools, and reduce disparities in educational outcomes.
How we work
Our values of excellence, integrity, accountability, collaboration and inclusion underpin everything we do. We are driven by our vision of more effective education systems around the world, and the way we work enables us to make this vision a reality. This is because:
We draw on world-leading research and best practice. We use our international expertise to make meaningful local change. With extensive global networks of researchers and educationalists, we are ideally placed to combine international best practice with contextually relevant insights to improve educational outcomes. (Find out more about our research and insights.) As a registered charity, we reinvest a percentage of our surplus into our programme of public domain research, highlighting ‘what works’ in education reform to create globally leading and innovative methodologies that turn government ambitions for better education systems into reality.
We design evidence-based, innovative solutions. We develop evidence-informed solutions to bring about real change, raise educational standards, and support global efforts to address learning crises and reduce inequalities of opportunity. Our work is grounded in evidence of what works in education reform, drawing on our continually refreshed body of research, and helping our clients and partners to apply this knowledge to regional and local contexts.
We deliver effective solutions at scale. Our work is not limited to our ideas: we also deliver solutions in practice, thanks to our teams of passionate educationalists, skilled project managers and highly experienced support staff (find out more about our people). To ensure we can deliver at scale and adapt to new contexts, we support our teams with tried-and-tested processes, rigorous review cycles, and enabling technologies.
We measure what works to ensure a positive impact on learning outcomes. Impact matters to us, so we invest in research and development, deploying robust internal evaluation systems and metrics to measure success and ensure accountability. We can then review and adapt our programmes to ensure they are designed and delivered to meet the needs of students and educators worldwide. (For more on our impact, read our Annual Impact Review.)
We are committed to building capacity for sustainable change. We foster responsive and proactive relationships with our clients and partners, working hand-in-hand to ensure a lasting, successful legacy. We are therefore a trusted partner of governments, academics and multilateral agencies across the globe. Our work helps to drive global understanding of education solutions, and we support global dialogues among international policymakers on education system improvements.
We work with global partners to further the impact of our work. We frequently work in partnership with like-minded organisations, including international organisations such as UNESCO, Save the Children and the World Bank. We also work on behalf of government departments, such as the UK Department for Education and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, as well as a range of national education ministries.
Our transformation model
We summarise our approach to making a difference in our work through our transformation model, detailed below. To find out more about us and the way we work for positive change, please contact us.