Learning From The World's First Development Impact Bond (DIB) in Education

Sol's ARC became a part of the world's first Development Impact Bond (DIB) in education through its partnership with Educate Girls. Here are our learnings......

What is the DIB?

The Educate Girls Development Impact Bond (DIB) is a pioneering new way to encourage private investors to fund development projects that is 100% focused on the outcomes achieved. It has helped improve education for 18,000 children, 9,000 of them girls, in 166 schools in Rajasthan, India. 

Sol's ARC developed inclusive learning content and training modules called “Gyan Ka Piatara” (GKP) a learning program in Math and English from Grade 1 to Grade 4 for the DIB. An external RCT was conducted by IDinsight to measure the learning outcomes. 

The Results

Educate Girls surpass learning outcome results at 160%. Learning gains levels for students in program schools grew by 79% more than their peers in control group schools –almost the difference of an entire additional year of instructions! 

Here were the learnings for Sol's ARC from a pedagogical perspective-

1. The results grew steadily in the first two years and increased dramatically in the last year-

Building pedagogy and delivery is simple, what takes time and patience is making sure you keep rebuilding it till it shows results. The GKP was revamped at least 20 times through the program till it did not increase access to learning for every child in the classroom. 

2. Children in year 3 of intervention showed similar gains in one year of intervention as compared to the others in two years-

An organisation requires incubation time to deliver region and issue specific programs. It also takes a lot of capacity building within the organisation to be able to learn and deliver at scale with quality. Once the organisation reaches a tipping point the learning outcomes are achieved faster, larger and more consistently.

3.The results were homogeneous across all groups of children (girls, boys, across castes and communities, children with special needs, migrant communities…)–

The results have been consistent in the hardest to reach places across children with variant abilities and circumstances. Building an inclusive pedagogy based on universal principles of design leads to better learnings for all children. Delivering home program for children in migrant communities ensured increased access to the hardest to reach places with the least possibility of gains. Continuous innovation in an effort to reach the last child increased outcomes across the population.

4.The results for Math and English exceeded those in Hindi-

The most difficult subjects to gain results for are also the ones where the maximum possible gain can be achieved. To be able to teach English by the volunteers who had extremely low proficiency in English (Most could not achieve results on ASER) was possible only by making the pedagogy user friendly and less daunting (every teaching aid had translations and transliterations). The Math pedagogy focused on analysis of typical errors children make and provided strategies to address them. The trainings were also bite size and followed with continuous support.

5. Multiple tiers of intervention ensures that every child learns- 

 Not all children learn with a single interventions. Multiple opportunities for learning through continued interventions need to be designed till every child has learnt at their level.