What We Know About Innovative Financing for Education
New Webinar Series!
Running from September 2026 to June 2027, the webinar series will create a platform where rigorous evidence and practical experience come together to inform future policy, practice and research on innovative financing for education.
Over the past decade, Innovative Financing for Education (IFE) has gained increasing attention as a potential way to mobilise additional resources along with improving the effectiveness and efficiency of education spending. Innovations in financing approaches are introduced by drawing on non-traditional sources of financing, including upfront capital from private investors, and financial management approaches like results-based or outcomes-based financing. These approaches often bring together diverse stakeholders – e.g., governments, private and philanthropic funders, impact investors, implementing organisations, researchers and evaluators – in new forms of collaboration, in which actors engage with and apply management practices shaped by sectors other than their own.
Despite growing interest, evidence on whether, how, and under what conditions these approaches contribute to more and better financing for education remains limited.
NORRAG has launched a new webinar series to present the findings from a five-year applied research project, Innovative Financing for Education (IFE) to Leave No One Behind. Since 2022, the project has examined how IFE mechanisms work in practice across initiatives in Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, India, Sierra Leone, and South Africa. The project’s unique learning partnership involves independent researchers, implementers and funders to foster continuous dialogue among those designing, financing, implementing and studying these initiatives. Beyond examining impact, the project has generated insights into how the processes, partnerships and contextual factors that shape the achievement of educational outcomes and reflected on the limitations of such models.
Case studies will include outcome funds (the Ghana Education Outcomes Program in Ghana and the Sierra Leone Education Innovation Challenge), impact bonds (the Impact Bond Innovation Fund in South Africa, the Quality Education India Development Impact Bond, and the Haryana Early Literacy Development Impact Bond in India), income share agreements (Chancen International), no-collateral student financing (Lending for Education in Africa Partnership in Kenya), and impact-linked financing (the Impact-Linked Fund for Education in Kenya, Ghana and Egypt).
Each webinar will combine independent research findings with first-hand perspectives from the organisations involved in designing, financing, managing and implementing these initiatives. Together, speakers will share what the evidence shows, exploring the motivations, trade-offs, partnerships and implementation realities that often remain absent from published research.
Webinars:
- Fostering Scalable Solutions and Systemic Change with OBF: Evidence from the Haryana Early Literacy Development Impact Bond. September 2026
- Evaluating the Quality Education India DIB: How Outcomes-Based Financing Can Shape Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Additionality. October 2026