Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of the impact of the UK’s multilateral education ODA investments on improving learning outcomes for children in literacy and numeracy.

In May 2021, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) began a results review of the UK's support to global education between 2015-2020, during which time we supported at least 15.6 million children with quality education. The review will examine UK bilateral aid, as well as aid to two multilateral education funds (Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and Education Cannot Wait (ECW)), and our multilateral aid to education via the World Bank's International Development Association (IDA). Publication of this review is expected in April 2022.

In addition, FCDO publishes annual reviews of UK support to the GPE and ECW online on our Development Tracker (https://devtracker.fcdo.gov.uk), including progress with improving children's learning outcomes. Our 2021 annual review of GPE found that 70 percent of GPE partner countries with available data saw improvements in learning outcomes between 2015-16 to 2019-20. The review encouraged GPE, in future, to focus more on supporting and incentivising developing countries to use assessment systems to generate more and better data on children's learning outcomes in countries receiving GPE funding.