India has made great progress in education with a primary enrollment rate of 99%, but what is the quality of education for Indian children? In 2018, ASER India’s annual study found that the average fifth grade student in India is at least two years behind. This situation has been further exacerbated by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated school closures.
In line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to improve the quality of education (SDG 4) so that children in school can truly learn, British Asia Trust (BAT), UBS Sky Foundation (UBSOF), Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF) and other institutions jointly launched the Quality Education Impact Bond (QEI DIB) in India in 2018.
The initiative is an innovative collaboration between private and philanthropic sector leaders to expand proven interventions to improve student learning outcomes and solve problems by unlocking new funding and improving the performance of existing funding. Critical funding gaps.
Impact bonds are performance-based contracts that facilitate financing from “venture investors” to cover the upfront working capital needed to provide services. The service is designed to achieve measurable, predetermined results, and if those results are achieved, investors will be rewarded with a “results sponsor.”
Improving literacy and numeracy skills for 200,000 students through funded learning outcomes and supporting four different intervention models:
Demonstrate the benefits of results-based funding to drive innovation in global education and transform traditional approaches to grantmaking and philanthropy.
Over the long term, the QEI DIB builds compelling evidence about what works and what doesn’t work in performance-based finance. These lessons have galvanized new funding and paved the way for a more mature and dynamic results-based funding market.
Accountability is the new black. One only needs to look at the critique of ESG efforts from “woke capitalism” to understand the importance of accountability for corporate and social strategy. In an era of distrust in the ability of business to make the world a better place, development finance scholars and practitioners seem generally to be seeking greater accountability: to better measure, manage, and communicate their impact to stakeholders while avoiding opponents.
Perhaps nowhere in the world of sustainable finance is the “proof in the pudding” found more than in results-based policies such as development impact bonds (DIBs). DIBs, social impact bonds and environmental impact bonds have proliferated in recent years, providing pay-for-performance solutions to current economic, social and environmental issues. For example, Washington, D.C. was one of the first cities in the United States to issue green bonds to finance green stormwater construction. In another project, the World Bank issued sustainable development “rhino bonds” to protect the habitat of the critically endangered black rhinoceros in South Africa. These public-private partnerships combine the financial strength of a for-profit institution with the contextual and substantive expertise of a results-driven organization, combining accountability with scalability.
By defining outcomes in advance and designating financial success (and payouts to investors) for achieving those outcomes, public-private partnerships use pay-for-performance models to demonstrate the effectiveness of social interventions while distributing them to high-need populations. Need them. India’s Education Quality Assistance Program is a prime example of how innovative collaborations between business, government and non-governmental partners can be economically self-sustaining while creating impact and accountability for beneficiaries.
Darden School of Business’ Institute for Social Business, in partnership with Concordia and the U.S. Secretary of State’s Office of Global Partnerships, presents the annual P3 Impact Awards, which recognize leading public-private partnerships that improve communities around the world. This year’s awards will be presented on September 18, 2023 at Concordia’s annual summit. The five finalists will be presented at a Darden Ideas to Action event on the Friday before the event.
This article was produced with support from the Darden Institute for Business in Society, where Maggie Morse is Program Director.
Kaufman teaches business ethics in Darden’s full-time and part-time MBA programs. She uses normative and empirical methods in business ethics research, including in the areas of social and environmental impact, impact investing, and gender. Her work has appeared in Business Ethics Quarterly and Academy of Management Review.
Before joining Darden, Kaufman completed her Ph.D. She received her PhD in applied economics and management from the Wharton School and was named an inaugural Wharton Social Impact Initiative doctoral student and an Emerging Scholar by the Association for Business Ethics.
In addition to her work at Darden, she is a faculty member in the Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Virginia.
BA from the University of Pennsylvania, MA from the London School of Economics, PhD from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
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Post time: Oct-09-2023