The Learning Generation Initiative (LGI)

The Learning Generation Initiative (LGI), formerly the Education Commission, is a global initiative hosted by the Education Development Center, encouraging greater progress on Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education – ensuring inclusive and quality education and promoting lifelong learning for all.    

The mission of LGI is to empower the people within and connected to education systems, to enable all children to be learning within a generation. To achieve this ambitious agenda, LGI works with governments and others to strengthen and create a more collaborative education workforce​; invest more in school health and nutrition​; and improve system delivery. 

LGI implements a threefold interactive and iterative approach to change by working closely with governments and other partners:  

• Analyse:  conducting pragmatic and independent research and analysis. 
• Act: co-designing, testing, and evaluating innovative solutions. 
• Amplify: convening and collaborating with national and global decision-makers and funders. This approach, complemented by LGI champions, helps translate evidence into action.   

Operating across multiple countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, LGI’s partnership with the What Works Hub for Global Education will drive political engagement and collaboration to translate research and evidence into effective actions at country, regional and global levels. 

Publications:

A missing link for inclusive education

• Summary: This synthesis summarises existing evidence on teachers with disabilities working in mainstream classrooms. It draws on primary data collected through different country projects to forefront what teachers with disabilities believe can be undertaken to support them. Beyond the evidence, the brief also provides insights from low- and middle- income country (LMIC) examples of how teachers with disabilities are included in education policy and planning. The synthesis concludes with recommendations for supporting teachers with disabilities through data, policy and investment, and practice as well as research.
• Resource Type: Synthesis Brief
• Geographical Focus: Cross-Country
• Date of publication: 2025
• Pillar: Evidence Use

Leveraging the potential of the Middle Tier to Improve Education Outcomes: The Role of a Capacity Assessment Framework

• Summary: This position paper examines the potential of middle-tier structures and actors to enhance management for improved learning outcomes and drive policy implementation. This paper highlights critical knowledge gaps and introduces an analytical framework for conducting a capacity assessment framework to strengthen the middle tier.
• Resource Type: Synthesis Brief
• Geographical Focus: Cross-Country
• Date of publication: 2025
• Pillar: Evidence Use

Learning Teams for Foundational Learning

• Summary: Learning team approaches encompass groups of education professionals that collaborate at every level—classroom, school, district, and central—to ensure learning for all. This note aims to set the agenda for further research on learning team approaches by defining what they are, briefly synthesizing the evidence for them, and providing a few examples of how they have been harnessed to improve foundational learning.
• Resource Type: Insight Note
• Geographical Focus: Cross-Country
• Date of publication: July 2024
• Pillar: Evidence Translation

Learning Teams to Support Children’s Learning and Wellbeing

• Summary: Learning team approaches aim to leverage different roles within education systems and re-think how actors might work in new ways with each other and with those outside the education system to support children’s learning. These case studies aim to deepen understandings around what prompts, informs, enables and sustains the design and establishing of learning teams, or new collaborative practices between different groups of relevant actors in education.
• Resource Type: Case Studies
• Geographical Focus: Kenya and Nepal
• Date of publication: October 2024
• Pillar: Evidence Use

Not the exception, but essential: Teachers with disabilities in mainstream classrooms

• Summary: The blog highlights that teachers with disabilities are rarely represented or visible in mainstream schools worldwide, despite their potential to enrich inclusive education by adapting lessons, challenging biases, and serving as role models. Drawing on a new research synthesis with evidence from nine countries, it shows that these teachers face common barriers—including inaccessible infrastructure, lack of accessible materials and EdTech, limited disability awareness among school leaders, few professional networks, and weak policy implementation—and calls for systematic changes such as better data collection, inclusive policies, and more support throughout their careers. Teachers with disabilities are not exceptions to be accommodated but essential voices at the heart of truly inclusive classrooms.
• Resource Type: Blog
• Geographical Focus: Cross-Country
• Date of publication: October 2025
• Pillar: Evidence Translation

Unlocking the potential of middle-tier leaders in East Africa’s education reform

• Summary: The blog explains that middle-tier education leaders—such as district and curriculum support officers—are a vital but underused force in translating national education reforms into real improvements in classroom learning across East Africa. It highlights evidence from a joint UNESCO-Learning Generation Initiative publication and a workshop where participants emphasized the middle tier’s critical role in strengthening foundational learning, while noting challenges like limited resources, data use barriers, and heavy administrative burdens. The piece calls for greater investment in professional development, better data systems, and stronger engagement of middle-tier leaders in policy design to unlock their potential and improve education outcomes.
• Resource Type: Blog
• Geographical Focus: Cross-Country
• Date of publication: July 2025
• Pillar: Evidence Translation

The anatomy of an education system: why the middle tier matters

• Summary: The blog highlights the critical but often overlooked role of the middle tier—district, regional, or sub-national education actors—in connecting national policy with classroom practice and driving sustainable improvements in education. It explains that strengthening this “missing middle” can help tailor reforms to local needs, support teachers more effectively, and improve equity and learning outcomes. The piece draws on a new publication developed with IIEP-UNESCO that outlines core middle-tier leadership functions and proposes a capacity framework to help countries better empower and invest in this essential layer of the education system.
• Resource Type: Blog
• Geographical Focus: Cross-Country
• Date of publication: May 2025
• Pillar: Evidence Use

Better collaborations to support children’s learning and development: how do we recognise learning teams?

• Summary: The blog argues that stronger collaboration across educators, communities, and organisations—described as learning teams—can better support children’s learning and development, but only if such teams are clearly understood and recognised. Based on research across more than 100 projects, the authors propose seven criteria to identify genuine learning teams, including shared holistic goals, diverse expertise, adaptability, contextual grounding, and mutual learning. These criteria aim to clarify what effective collaboration looks like and help scale approaches that meaningfully improve learning outcomes.
• Resource Type: Blog
• Geographical Focus: Cross-Country
• Date of publication: October 2024
• Pillar: Evidence translation

 Learning Teams for Foundational Learning: Gender Considerations for Inclusive Learning Teams

• Summary: The blog highlights the importance of integrating gender considerations into learning team approaches for foundational learning. It stresses that understanding gender dynamics in team composition, roles, and responsibilities is key to creating inclusive and equitable teams that challenge harmful norms and redistribute power fairly. It also discusses how learning teams can address broader gender inequalities—such as engaging fathers in education and supporting women’s leadership—by identifying and reducing institutional barriers, promoting leadership opportunities for women, and intentionally designing team structures that support gender equity.
• Resource Type: Blog
• Geographical Focus: Cross-Country
• Date of publication: October 2024
• Pillar: Evidence Translation

Events:

Publication launch: Leveraging the potential of the middle tier to improve education outcomes

• Date of event: 10 June 2025
• Recording:  Available