With more than a quarter of a billion children worldwide not in school today and hundreds of millions more not learning, is there a solution?

The BHP Foundation in collaboration with world experts and leaders, thinks so.

Three years ago, the Foundation launched its Education Equity Program and together with five like-minded global partners, they’re working towards driving a fundamental shift in the education and learning ecosystem.

With a laser focus on creating a more holistic approach that supports disruptors and innovators to develop, test and scale new models; improve evidence-informed decision-making; create enabling environments where students can thrive; and breaks harmful norms and barriers for under-represented groups, it is equipping local leaders with the evidence they need to make informed decisions and achieve the best possible impact.

One partner is the Education and Endowment Foundation (EEF). Their Teaching and Learning Toolkit is helping teachers and senior leaders make evidence-informed decisions about how to most effectively use their available resources to get the best learning outcomes for students.

With 70 per cent of secondary school leaders in England using the Toolkit to inform their decision-making, the Foundation saw the opportunity to support EEF to test this model internationally. It has now been contextualized and translated for Latin America, Australia, Spain and the Middle East, with the potential to reach teachers in every corner of the world.

This is now the largest education evidence database in the world.

The Foundation also partners with the Brookings Centre for Universal Education (CUE). Their work is giving education leaders the evidence and guidance they need to shape and transform education systems ensuring young people have the skills and ability to navigate a constantly evolving world.

In one of the largest parent engagement efforts of our time, CUE have engaged widely, conducting interviewing with approximately 25,000 parents across 10 countries about the role of families in transforming education. They’ve also established real-time scaling labs in Botswana, Cote d’Ivoire, Jordan, Tanzania and the US (Philadelphia), created multi-lingual tools to identify, adopt and adapt what works, and developed real-time data collection tools all critical for making informed and impactful decisions.

It’s through these global partnerships that BHP Foundation is unlocking the scale and pace of change needed to achieve equity of education and learning around the world by accelerating systemic advances in education and learning outcomes.

Read more about the Foundation’s Education Equity Program.